Our Own Fairy Tales
by CampionSayn
Summary: "Be American and read something prolific for your troubles, fool." Pieces on Kurt/Todd for the friendly at heart. Collective. Rating has risen. TM
1. Catch a Catcher

Title: Our Own Fairy Tales  
Summary: "Be American and read something prolific for your troubles, fool." A piece on Kurt/Todd for the friendly at heart. One-shot.  
Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Man franchise, I make no money off of writing this. I also don't own Lolita, Catcher in the Rye or Murder by Numbers.  
Warning: I suck at accents and so don't expect much there.  
Dedication: All because of the wonderful **Lady Devonna**. The fic '_Ripples'_ has kept me awake trying to finish reading for the last week and I am anticipating chapters to come with fingers crossed. Seeing as I can't shake her hand and throw a party in honor of that fic (GO and READ it NOW), I'll settle for putting this out instead.

* * *

_-:-  
__**Certain things they should stay the way they are.**__ You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. __**I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway.**__  
-Catcher in the Rye._

* * *

Sometimes, walking through a park when it's freezing cold and people can see their breathe in the air, is like living a fairy tale for just a second that can maybe stretch out for five minutes. Or, at least, that was Todd Tolansky's opinion, fingers pressing deep into his rather threadbare grey jacket (_he'd had the thing since most of the Brotherhood and X-Geeks had come to an almost unanimous decision that they should go about their lives and not fight each other; a great idea in theory, but in practice Summers and Lance still got into verbal arguments, the old people still remained on shaky ground and everyone pretty much stuck to their own corners except for the girls that actually went out together at the mall_) to retain some heat before it got sucked out of him. He really needed to buy gloves before the full brunt of winter came along and the affects of his mutation started making it difficult to leave the breaking house he called his residence and get to school or the library without falling into a coma (_it happened the year before and Lance could be a real mother hen when he thought one of the boys or Wanda was going to die even after he dragged them back from some alley and spent two hours piling hot water bottles and blankets on top of them_).

He wouldn't have even been in the park, walking along the gum riddled and water fowl excreted upon sidewalk that traced the grooves of the tiny little pond at the far end of the place, but he wanted to get to the library and check out some book they'd been talking about in class that afternoon. He wasn't going to do the report or anything, but it sounded interesting at least and gave him the excuse to sit in the fantastically warm building until closing. And it was quiet there—no Pietro complaining about where his hair products had gone or Wanda yelling up from the kitchen how it was good to share—with few people to make nasty little faces at his scent. He'd be hiding in one of the third floor corners in the classical literature section anyway (_nobody walked around there that was his age and recognized him from the news; and even if there were, it was a public place and so, legally, he couldn't be thrown out unless he was caught vandalizing something or whatever_).

His breathe floated up in a little silver and white cloud as he hopped over a log that had been breaching onto the sidewalk since the fall when they'd had a freak windstorm (_not by the white haired chick from the X mansion, but still weird_) that had shattered an old willow into oblivion. In a way, it made the place prettier and more natural, so despite the pain in the ass it was to go around it, the city council had decided to let it stay until it rotted away naturally. Todd landed precariously close to the pond, but didn't slip on the ice leading to it, so it was okay by him.

* * *

The book, the book he'd wanted to look into at the library (_when he got there a few minutes later, the dead feeling of his skin being felt up and dismantled by the wonderful heat provided through the extra large vents on every floor_) was actually in the hands of a certain of the X-Geeks when he got up to the third floor and found the spot the book had occupied empty like a hole in a cloud when a plane passes through the body of its expanse. Kurt Wagner (_or Fuzzball or Nightcreeper, whatever name fit depending on what mood the Toad was in when confronted with the other_) was sitting in one of those cushy seats the city usually sprang for so the patrons of the library would be more inclined to come back often enough to give reason for the place to stay open, a set of identical seats standing like the four corners of the earth beside and across from him. He looked comfortable reading 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov (_this version of the book bigger than the one Todd had broken into the literary teacher's desk to get a peek at before he'd headed out of school and then gathered the nerve to visit to hall of knowledge that was quiet and not loud like the school_) so if Todd wanted to get his hands on the thing he would either have to wait it out or set up a scenario in which Kurt would leave in a huff (_preferably without taking the book with him_).

Being himself, Todd picked the second option and started humming a chord from one of the bands Lance had a tendency to play on the crappy radio he had while working on his jeep (_a little spiel that went "…There really isn't any need for bloodshed…If you do it with a little more finesse_…"), trailing along the rest of the bookshelves (_in and out of sight like one of those weird birds in slasher films that showed up just before the murderer or monster or Headless Horseman_) in search of another book to occupy his time.

He settled next to a row of Salinger novels and short stories, perfectly in sight through the parts in the bookcases (_it allowed for Nightcrawler to see Toad's middle, knees, dirt and snow mottled shoes and his chest leading up to his Adam's Apple_) and upped to volume of his humming as he pulled out 'Catcher in the Rye'. This was a book he'd been told by Lance explicitly to read (_it was like half of his final grade or something and Avalanche wanted him to try for the love of God_) and review for a school paper and turn in on time or the older mutant would kick his ass and never give him a ride again. He'd done as asked (threatened) and found it wasn't terrible, but actually kind of cool book. It was written out in a way that was the quintessential teenage language (_swearing every other paragraph, violence, suicide, male hookers—small wonder it had been banned in quite a few town and public libraries for, what, thirty-plus years_) and so Todd had turned in the paper and gotten a moderately good grade for his work (_the only B he'd gotten in that class since he lost interest in everything but his own survival_).

He hadn't noticed he'd stopped humming (_what, it wasn't like he didn't entirely appreciate literature; it was just he had no interest in explaining it on paper to a teacher that seemed to think he knew the answers to everything_) until he smelled hint of daylight scented cologne (_wonderful how some perfume places could snap up the ingredients to make a person smell like a warm hamper in a way that wasn't awful and too heavy_) mixed with light traces of sulfur. Then he turned around nonchalantly and found Fuzzy glaring holographic features at him. Perhaps in his real form Kurt would look a little scary (_not to Toad of course, they'd fought to many times for him to be scared of him even in the beginning of their mutual rivalry_), but as he stood with Caucasian skin and five fingers on each hand with no tail visibly lashing behind him like an angry cat, Todd just greeted him with a smile showing his colored teeth and a wave a five year old would give an adult, "Yo."

"Vhat are you doing here, Toad?" Kurt growled lowly, abiding by library policy to retain a low decibel if he was to speak.

The _Lolita_ book was held in hand so Todd took the opportunity to point at it with the hand not holding onto the _Catcher_book like it was the X-Man's fault entirely, "Came lookin' to impov on my current standin' in school. But, uh, seein' as you have what I was aimin' for, I thought I'd make myself busy until you put it back or whatever."

Kurt blinked and then looked down at the book in his hand, obviously a little stunned at the unsettling grin directed at him from the Brotherhood boy. The leather of the spine slid along his wrist as he looked at the title before looking back at Toad. He seemed expectant, and Kurt didn't know why, but he didn't like it very much. Thus, coming to the conclusion that it would be good to get more information, he opened his mouth, "It's not a school assignment. Vhy vould you bother vith it if you couldn't get anything out of doing so? The only reason I hear you read that book," he pointed to the little thing in Todd's hand, pages moving back and forth where they could as the grip on it wasn't very tight and almost threatened the chance of falling to the floor if Toad moved, "Vas that Lance made you."

The hairs on the back of Todd's neck prickled at that. His grip tightened on the spine of the book and he slipped it easily back where it came from (_not smashing the cover against the other book and with no damage at all; almost a reassurance that he wasn't lying, in Kurt's opinion_), before shoving his hands back into his coat pockets, "Lance can't make me do anythin', fool."

Kurt gave him a look and Todd changed gears for a second.

"Okay, he _can_, but that don't mean he _did_."

The look remained and, to prevent himself from having to elaborate and dig further into his own grave, his hand flitted out and nabbed the Lolita book from Kurt with no real complication as Kurt didn't think he was about to do it. The wonders of being a pick-pocket since as long as Todd could remember.

"I think the bigger question here is why you, dawg, are reading something that, if I remember the teacher's words right, is considered extreme even in this day and age? It's not an assignment, after all, yo."

Instead of looking embarrassed or chagrined at having the book snatch away from him (_a part of his character that Toad liked to bring to the light for reasons he never could pinpoint, but would continue to enjoy as long as he could get away with it_) or even insulted at the hints the other put out, Kurt folded his arms in front of his chest (_he looked a little like Scott when training new recruits, which Todd found creepy_) and gave a little half smile, "I've already read that book since I vas rather young. The teacher just reminded me about it today. I've never read it in English so I thought I'd see how different it was from German or Russian."

"…And?" Todd questioned, leafing through to the chapter the teacher had called a "tremendously bold" thing to write about in any country; the chapter the middle-aged Humbert Humbert took Dolores Hayes to a fine hotel. Not that he was a perv; he just wanted to see if the literature teacher had been pulling the leg of everyone in class.

Not as though it mattered that he was talking to Todd Tolansky (_technically speaking, the Brotherhood was not operating as it used to before the whole problem with the Egyptian crazy mutant, so there was no real harm in talking. If anyone asked, he would just tell them it was about school—not a lie_), Kurt brought a hand to his chin and made himself look contemplative before answering with, "Eh, it's different. I mean, it has the same general tones, but in English it seems much more raw and precise than in Russian and more—how you say—morbid than in German."

If something could be more morbid in English than it was in German than that would be something, in the Toad's opinion, worth reading. Like the original Grimm's Fairy Tales.

"If you've already read it, then you don't really need this, do ya?"

Kurt let out a mix between a sigh and a snort (_not attractive, but then, why should he try to be when the situation was obvious and pathetically so_?) and stepped out from behind the book shelf they found themselves talking almost civilly behind, out of sight from the other patrons that were not around the third floor so close to closing time, "Take it. Just don't ruin it—it's a classic."

Before the Nigthcrawler could wander back over to the chair he had been sitting in before being annoyed by the humming of the other mutant (_he'd heard that song too many times in the morning as that was Scott's alarm tone, he could recognize it even if it was hummed through a harmonica under-water_), he found a book tossed over his head and directly into his seat. The cover had a red horse blazing on the platform of a merry-go-round and that was all Kurt looked at before turning around to whisper harshly at the Toad not to mistreat the books of a public library (_how pathetic he felt about that was private_).

Todd looked completely unrepentant as he made way back down the giant staircases that lead to every floor of the library and called over his shoulder, "Be American and read something prolific for your troubles, fool. That one's actually kinda good for something written in the early fifties. Aside from that, you have a nice day."

"…Uh, danke." No need not to be polite, at least.


	2. Where Shall I Hide

Summary: "Be American and read something prolific for your troubles, fool." Pieces on Kurt/Todd for the friendly at heart. Collective.  
Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Man franchise, I make no money off of writing this. I also don't own any other obvious memorabilia.

Okay, so I decided to add on more. Go me.

* * *

_-:-  
Don't listen to me, but listen.  
-The Butterfly, from The Last Unicorn._

* * *

**Where Shall I Hide**-:-

_Butterflies were pretty and beautiful and lived "for but three summer days." Which was why everyone seemed to believe was the reason that Todd avoided those things—and moths!_

_But no. He didn't avoid them because they were beautiful and delicate; he was a dude for fuck's sake._

_He avoided them because if he saw them, up close and personal, he got the urge to eat them. He was amphibian, it was an easy meal, all his nerves told his tongue to shoot and score. And he wouldn't put himself through that (he hadn't done that since he was twelve)._

_Why?_

Kurt found himself staring at the rather interesting sight of Todd standing in the middle of the park on his head. Hands planted on either side of his head, face the color of a strawberry Kurt had eaten the other day, eyes staring hatefully over a few yards away at a grouping of lovely spring flowers—thirteen white and yellow butterflies dancing along the petals.

"Vhat are you doing?"

"Concentrating."

Kurt treaded over a few bushels of clover strewn over the park, feet sinking more into the earth (wet from rain two nights ago and dew from that morning) than was physically possible with the sidewalk he'd been traversing on his way from the library to the institute. His inducer was on, obviously, but his tale waved a little behind him before he caught himself and it wrapped back around his middle so he could crouch a few feet away from Toad. He didn't want the other to kick him for asking, "On vhat?"

"Not eating."

Was it weird that Kurt wanted to hear him say that again? He felt like it was so he just glanced over to one of the much larger yellow butterflies that was fluttering closer to both boys, sitting on one flower and then another. He smiled a little before he recalled what he was doing. Better not to get attached to the thing or he'd be crushed when a slimy green tongue darted out and snapped back behind yellow teeth.

"…How long have you been here?" Kurt finally spoke again when the butterfly decided to come a little closer and the blue mutant was resigned to the probability of the yellow beauty getting swallowed any second.

Todd splayed his legs out a little further back so they almost touched the ground and, if Kurt looked closely, he could see the outlines of the Toad's ribs along the lining of his shirt before he focused on just how contorted the boy looked. As if he was one of those 1930's sideshow actors (The Wasp Boy or Backwards Hamlet) that could pleasure themselves if they really wanted to.

Kurt stopped thinking like that as soon as Todd's feet were indeed on the ground and the butterfly wouldn't need his tongue to be caught; Todd would just need to reach out quickly and snatch the thing between his fingers.

"Four hours now and I would kill for a cricket at this point."

The butterfly had the audacity to fly over and seat itself on one of Toad's left ribs, causing Todd to almost jolt from his back bent pose (and possibly snap his own spine).

Kurt really couldn't stand looking at the poor creature, so he laid out on his stomach with his head held over his crossed arms, eyes flicking from the butterfly to the extremely uncomfortable pose Todd was in. It almost looked like he was in pain from holding still and not trying to eat the butterfly.

"You've been vaiting for a cricket vhen there are dozens of butterflies wandering around here as big as gerbils? Vhat, saving them for when you can't get anything more healthy? Are these gourmet for you?"

More blood rushed to Todd's head and it really wasn't his fault that he couldn't hold himself up anymore. When he brought his head up towards his chest, the rest of him dropped like a rock and the butterfly flew up like a shot back the way it came, some dust from its wings rubbing off on his clothing on the way, as though he had spilled popcorn butter and it stained. He growled towards the creature as if it were a gnat and rolled onto his stomach to glare at the fluttery beings, ignoring Kurt until he finally answered.

"Don't give me that, fuzzy. Butterflies are the most disgusting things I've ever eaten in my life, yo. 'S worse than eating one of those Pine Fresh trees in taxi cabs. I'm jus' here to test my patience."

Fifteen feet away, near one of those tunnels the city built into the park for show and for kids or whatever they built them for, loud laughing could be heard that signaled football practice for the jocks at Bayville High letting out; all of the butterflies taking flight in one go. Kurt and Todd weren't much better in that Kurt hopped from his laid down position and moved back for the path. Todd was more sluggish—blood in the head for four hours was not pleasant to be relieved from—and took a moment to glance around with hazy eyes before stepping back over toward the path as well; a little hop and then a simple walk with his hands in his pockets. Like he didn't really care about the jocks near the tunnels and probably getting caught doing nothing—easy target for being picked on.

Kinda like he was drunk.

Despite any urges to the contrary—like he should just leave the dizzy Toad to his own devices as he normally would—Kurt turned from the way he had been heading and grabbed Todd by his upper arm, steering him a little more easily than he would have liked the way Kurt was heading. Just in time to avoid being seen among the high trees by Duncan and his group; like two mice behind stalks of corn hiding from cats.

"Where we goin', yo? This ain't the way to the boarding house," Todd spoke lightly, not at all offended by the hand on his arm or the stupid smile on his face. (Perhaps later when all the blood had circulated out of his head and he could think in a way that wasn't like a stoner on a high.)

"No, I don't think you should go that vay right now, unless you vant your ass kicked."

"By a butterfly?"

Kurt sighed and, looking back over his shoulder and around the rest of the park, made an executive decision in bamfing the both of them somewhere decidedly less out in the open and dangerous with the threat of jocks milling around.

Nothing was left of them but a small cloud of brimstone ash and not even that when a few of the butterflies scrambled to get out of the way of a couple of the football players trying to catch a few for their girlfriends.


	3. Poison Apples

Late nights, man.

* * *

_-:-  
Will you wake me up, boy,  
If I bite your poison apple?  
-Wonderland._

* * *

_Pretty apples are not quite fairy tale material_.

Kurt could feel most of the oxygen he had swallowed five seconds ago, alone in the library and with nobody around in the quiet of the third floor but himself, disappear and turn sour in his windpipe. The windpipe, itself and alone, had turned into this uncomfortable, wet thing as the large red apple Kurt had chosen for a snack while studying broke off a piece after he'd bit into it and lodged into his throat like the plunger attached to the bathtubs at the institute. The feeling left him heavy and he didn't really notice as his three fingered hands clutched his neck and his elbows knocked the rest of the apple to the floor, as well as the book he had been reading on fairy tales from his home country.

A few hacking coughs tried to dislodge the piece of fruit (a sliver of what he usually inhaled on a daily basis, no bigger than another's bottom lip and vaguely as soft as a guy's), but with little relief. His eyes were watering and he soon found himself on unsteady legs, still clutching his throat and making gagging motions in attempt to vomit and remove the apple forcefully if deemed completely necessary.

_The Huntsman doesn't kill for a heart_.

A pair of hands that were not his own and actually very rough on contact with his person, found themselves around his waist and one curved into a fist, the other clutching it. Kurt didn't know the last time he had felt such a swift pain to the gut, but it was not entirely unpleasant as the fist and hand found their ways between Kurt's ribs and into his stomach, pressing out the rest of his precious air through his nose and the nausea that came with such a feeling (like stuffing his own head into a toilet and then pressing down on the handle so the water sucked and swirled) sent his tongue out, along with the red piece of apple. The fruit heaved out and landed like an especially fat rose petal seven feet across the room and onto one of the chairs provided for other patrons. It sat on the seat cushion and Kurt saw his spit soak into the fabric.

Bile rose up from his stomach at the sight but Kurt bit down on his tongue to keep from vomiting. Even if his throat was burning from scratches doubtlessly inflicted by the apple bite on the way out, he didn't want to embarrass himself any more that hour. It was too much if he threw up and the staff came to see the mess.

"Yo, you a'ight, blue boy?"

_The magic mirror on the wall was not ordered to show a person, but rather, a reflection_.

Kurt looked up, dizzy but not down, and found the person he thought one of the least likely to ever bother helping him if he was in mortal (if somewhat humiliating; and it _so_was humiliating) danger.

Toad looked vaguely occupied with keeping a foot away from the sick looking mutant with the holowatch. He knew the need to vomit when he saw it and didn't want to be in firing range when Kurt went nuclear; it would be even worse than seeing Fuzzy launch that piece of fruit over to the chair across the way—the chair he decided he was never going to sit in again, even if he, admittedly, was more disgusting by far and shouldn't have many standards. It was one thing to sit on something (furniture, a stairway, the banisters, the roof) in the Brotherhood, where he could shuffle the thought of disgust away for another time, but another thing entirely when he had been the one partially responsible for putting the mess there.

The much paler boy's foot lifted off of the floor by an inch and twitched sideways twice. His leg was falling asleep with just standing there waiting for Kurt to answer him.

_A willow branch snaps at a figure making its way through unknown terrain in fear_.

"…Better now," Kurt finally answered, voice scratchy and almost flu-like from the damage to his esophagus, hands moving from his neck to pick up his belongings and swiftly toss the remainder of the apple into a trashcan adjacent to a section of books that mostly featured memories of the time of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during his period of being equally stalked, hated and worshipped privately by Antonia Salieri, "Danke, by the vay."

Todd adjusted the scarf around his neck—tattered and grossly brown thing with deep red dye at the very ends where tassels bunched up to try and swat at his ears when he walked about outside—and shrugged off the thanks, but didn't move away quite yet, "No prob. It wouldn't have been fair to just leave you like that. The lady downstairs would have found your body and I can't guess—or want to guess—what a scream from her would sound like, yo. Findin' a dead ratty plush toy up here? Dude, that's just bad manners."

From over the edge of the staircase, down on the second floor and travelling up, a harsh 'shush' rang and Kurt cringed quietly while Todd made a profane hand gesture in the general direction of the reprimand.

_Underfoot and unnoticed, a heeled shoe dislodges a small amphibian from its home under damp leaves and soft moss. An echoed, whiney croak is all the proof that the creature had been present in a moment of terror at all_.

As though saving someone from choking to death were an event faced every day, Todd stepped away from the other boy and hopped over behind another section of books, calling gently over his shoulder, "So, uh, later, Fuzzbutt."

The silhouette of the smaller mutant moved out of Kurt's sight before he could say anything more, but Kurt, for a reason not understood by himself at the time (_shock, he would later find out, from Jean fretting with him in the medical area of the institute, mother hen that she was to the German boy and every other person younger than either her or Scott_), was not quite willing to just let the situation go on such an informal note. It actually was almost insulting to him that Todd seemed totally okay with saving his life—and without any sort of credit!

_A fog from a genie's bottle, but that is not a correct thing to have in a story such as this, even if it does work, a little_.

Rather than moving to pick up some of the books he had treaded through deep snow to get to in the afternoon, with no sun out and no way to warm himself until he got to the library and straight up _sat_on a vent for an hour before he felt like doing anything else, Tolansky had made his way from the third floor to the first in a quick jiffy. He would just browse around the first floor (boring in his opinion, but sometimes he found the stuff by Bradbury worth reading if he was especially out of it after the clock struck midnight and there was nobody in the Brotherhood house awake to pester inanely for his own enjoyment) for half an hour, soak up heat from some of the more crappy heating vents the floor came with and make it back home before even Lance noticed him missing. Supposing the heat he gathered didn't die with him five blocks short of the house.

And supposing he didn't get hit by a car for not moving fast enough at a crosswalk like the week before, but even that seemed better than sticking around the library when Fuzzy would no doubt want to talk to him some more-!

He groaned outwardly as, stepping behind a shelf entirely meant for Stephen King (who freaked him out, but was excellent for ideas on pranks) and about to pull 'The Shining' from its own space, the very same mutant Todd had inadvertently saved from choking popped up beside him and glared in a less than ideal way at the shaggy haired boy. His eyes always came off as too innocent with the holowatch working, so Todd didn't flinch and pulled the book out and tucked it under his arm, stepping around Kurt to get to the 'T-Ws' and not looking back. He was a hood, he was good at irking people to make a point; like not wanting to talk about incidents or heroics that would get him in hot water with the rest of the Brotherhood, probably forever and ever and ever if they found out.

He sneezed once at the smell of sulfur, but settled in front of the 'Ws' with a little head tilt. If he recalled correctly—which he thought he did—there was something both funny and sad he had wanted to get the summer before, but it had been checked out.

_Not a skin white as snow or lips red as blood, but the color black worked in ways if the eye and mind perceived it the right way_.

"You're not going to mention this ever again, are you?"

"Nope." Nonchalance was the key to many doors Todd had needed both opened and locked in his life, and he found that a lot of awkward situations—like the one he was stuck in at that moment—were resolved easily with it. He'd stick with it while running his thumb over book titles, even if Kurt had an odd expression on his face that could easily have been either anger, annoyance or a mottling of confusion.

"Even though you just did a good deed in saving my life—such as it is, even to you?"

Todd pulled out the book he had been looking for—Brief Interviews With Hideous Men; if that wasn't something for him then he didn't know what was—and tucked it under the other book he had been holding, glancing only briefly at Kurt as he stretched into the rather uncomfortable position (for him, anyway; his spine wasn't quite built like most people) of standing; for once a little taller than Kurt, who had been crouching next to the spot Todd had previously been, "Don't want the credit, yo. Bad for the reputation as you and I know it."

"Vhy?"

Todd shrugged again, his scarf curving to fit perfectly around his clavicle on one end and along his spine on the other end.

"Makes things pretty complicated. Don' really need that, fool."

"Even if it might be good for you?" Kurt proceeded to ask, standing up and towering a few inches over Todd once more; a maneuver than chaffed at Todd in more ways than one, even if it did allow for them to look eye to eye until he stepped over to a vent and crouched like his name entailed, books balanced on his knees to trap more warmth along his legs and stomach.

"Yep."

_The forest opens up, but still, mystery_.


	4. Good Vibrations

_-:-  
But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.  
-Alice Walker._

* * *

**Good Vibrations**-:-

There are hidden dangers on the field of battle. Not like mud that can mire down an entire French army during the Crusades or nerve gas hidden away during what is supposed to be a truce; not for mutants. Hidden dangers come in not recognizing friend or foe when a use of one power affects another and it can't be taken back once a target is hit. Those sorts of dangers are the worst of all, because by the time someone recognizes a mistake, the culprit won't know or care if the assumptions of guilt upon them are right or wrong.

"_Oh, c'mon yah blue gecko; show what you've got!"_

"_I believe I just did, slime ball!"_

If a fight takes place between two rival factions among mutants, it's good to set boundaries to make sure the strong can take their own hits and the week can avoid those much more terrifying and harmful evils.

_Wanda waved a hand, slick and perfect and precise and Cyclops, unable to close his eyes, was left to whirl in a perfect circle and then through the air; flashes of his red energy bursting every which way and nothing he could do about it. Jean attempted to give Wanda a little start through her system, and it appeared, to the observations of Avalanche, Quicksilver, The Blob and some of the X-men in the midst of battle with their opponents (two were too busy doing acrobatic feats and tossing themselves bodily at each other to care or notice; focused entirely on their sparring partner), that it worked. A little flicker of energy made its way from Scott's visor before he could close his eyes, but it was small—a flash of bird wings or a third of a lightning bolt—so he didn't pay any attention to it_.

If boundaries aren't set, the damage can be irreparable.

_Two toed feet, agile and strong (though not as strong as the pair that had been making their way to thin torso and furry face), pressed upwards and bounced Toad off into the air, a little flare of pain riding along the smaller mutant's thin and slick neck before he even hit the ground. There was blood in his nose and mouth, panic setting into him as he knew that Nightcrawler didn't carry sharp weapons. Instinct took over and Todd Tolansky clutched at his neck and bounded away with the rest of the retreating Brotherhood. Kurt Wagner grinned with clean and sharp canines, proud of himself as he bounded over to the rest of his victorious friends; nobody noticing the dark blottings of dark red in the grass as the night was dark and the moon hanging above them had only begun to move out of its cycle from newness (nothing more than a sliver of light in total darkness_).

* * *

It had been a month since the battle between the X-Men and Brotherhood over something involving a mining shaft out near Arrowrose and for some reason or another that the students of Xavier couldn't explain, most of the Brotherhood had seemed brighter than usual. Wanda especially had been seen in school with an extra swagger in her step (a statement to the world that she could take on anything and everything and without the headaches and lack of control she'd had in previous months) and a less angry expression on her face.

But, most of the Brotherhood, did not mean, in Kurt's opinion as he stared across the span of the gym, running in a circle with everyone else and sweating buckets under his fur and hologram because of the furnace turned up for winter blasting eighty degrees with very few breaks, all of the Brotherhood. Toad had been rather…less annoying and less like himself since coming back from his three day absence after the mining fiasco. He looked thinner than he normally did, eyes sinking into his head and upper bother bundled up for the first time since Kurt had ever met him with long sleeved turtlenecks and hoodies that were too bid for him and most certainly must have been gotten through thrift shops if not simply stolen.

In fact, Kurt blinked, eyes still on Todd as he jogged with the rest of the class with a little shuffle and shaking along his entire frame (winter, it seemed, was a very big deal even with the heat the school provided); Kurt hadn't heard him make a joke among the Brotherhood, trash talk the X-Men, speak up in class or even make a sound during the lunch period. Not for a month…

'_Did something happen with him and the others, or is he just being veirder than usual_?'

Despite himself, Kurt resolved to keep a timid eye and ear open and on Todd when, after gym and during lunch, he snuck off without eating anything or even making an effort to go near the rest of the Brotherhood. He just wandered out of the gym and out the back door of the school; passing by Wanda without looking at her and the Scarlet Witch noticing him but not making an attempt to actually acknowledge him. It was unsettling to the fuzzy dude.

* * *

It had been Wanda's fault. Cyclops would have been easy to blame, but even if he was the gun, Wanda was the one that pulled and then held the trigger until her chosen weapon had emptied and had been forced out her control. Todd didn't want to blame her, but after weeks and weeks of him being silent and everyone seeming all the more happy for it, it was impossible to ignore.

Plus, the pain was getting worse and being without the ability to complain, Todd was getting more cranky and likely to be far more spiteful than he ever thought he would be after all the crap the universe had unloaded onto him in loads.

Stepping out of the school (it hurt his back to walk, even slowly, but if he hopped anywhere anymore he got lightheaded and then wound up vomiting dry heaves for about an hour; walking was the best he could do after gym class with all of his muscles screaming bloody murder at him) Todd made his way towards the bleachers on the track field. It was snowing and snow was bad for him in so many ways, but it also soothed the burning ache that had been along the outer and inner lining if his throat for a while. If he sat out there long enough, there was a small chance it might even bring down the fever that had been building in his system like yellow pus for over a week.

Sighing through his nose (not his mouth; he'd only open that now if he had to and, seeing as very few people even talked to him, that wasn't a problem), the dusty brown haired teen brought a hand up gently to the collar of his black turtleneck and ran his pointer finger along the edge. Less than a second and he brought the webbed appendage away, a hot and painful jolt running across him that he didn't want prolonged. He pulled the shirt's collar a little higher and then tucked his hands away to protect them from the snow as he took a seat in the front row of the bleachers and mentally went over possibilities of medical treatment for what felt like the millionth time in over twenty days. His yellow eyes that not even he could find attractive tracing the outlines in the clouds and glazed over as more snow began to fall, some going so far as to settle in his hair without melting.

'_Hm, maybe if I go begging to the X-Men I'll at least be able to eat solid food again…_'

Thinking about his current condition was certainly better than thinking about its affect. He didn't want to think anymore about how Wanda was a lot happier now that he still did her favors (opening doors for her, making her meals, cleaning the house now that pranks were too difficult without help and joking couldn't move past his lips without him choking on his own tongue, buying her flowers just the week before but not giving them to her outright and just leaving them in a vase in the kitchen that she admired but didn't ask where they'd come from) without taking credit in crowing and pet names. He didn't want to think of how Freddy was growing somehow more social without Todd hanging off of him (he'd gotten Tabby to go out with him two weeks ago because of not having Todd voice his opinion on the matter) like a limpet on his shoulder. He didn't like to think that Pietro was getting away with a lot of stuff that Todd had never noticed before and did now that he had much more time on his hands. Todd didn't want to think on how Lance had assumed this was Todd trying to be more mature to impress Mystique and Magneto and was giving him space to do just that (a proud look in his eye that was there for all the wrong reasons).

His shoulders twitched and his frame shook for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with emotion that didn't have an outlet. He would have started crying, tears running without sobs, but the bell rang out over the field and he was feeling stiff along all of his joints.

Reaching a hand up, he brushed snow off of the top of his head and wiped water from the edges of his eyes, stepping down from the bleachers and walking across the field in the veins of the exact steps he'd taken to get to his contemplation. Numb feeling welled up in him and his head felt like cotton when he stepped back through the school doors with his stiff joints and his fever building up along the outlines of his forehead and the curves of his ears that an unobservant viewer would mistake for embarrassment.

The conjoined feelings prevented him from immediately noticing that with the halls filling up with students trying to get to class, he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings and had bodily bumped a wiry arm into thick muscle that made up most of a large football star with blonde hair and a poor attitude towards anyone perceived as weaker and much easier to win a fight against.

He did hear a pair of books hit the floor (just thick and leafy enough to be for history of the Crusades and possibly having notes stuffed into the break between one page to another) immediately before a hand that had much practice in catch and release found his shoulder and a booming voice (booming being an operative word as volume had become a lot more defined with the wet cotton in Todd's head weaving together) asked, "Now, why is it that you can never watch where you're going, Tolansky?"

Todd closed his eyes when he was flung back to look at who was very likely about to beat him up simply for the reason of accidental body contact and the fact that in his not being able to answer the question, the situation would escalate much faster than it normally could.

'_Fuck, yo_.'

* * *

The circle of students goading and cheering and waiting for bloodshed had been forming before Kurt even turned the corner to get to his next class and if he had been in a better state of mind, he might have gone to get a teacher. Or, maybe Jean as she had some leverage over Duncan and some previous experience with talking him down and out of stupid choices. Or maybe he would have just kept moving to avoid making things worse.

Such as it was, he did no such thing when he saw Duncan lift an emaciated body over his head and started asking for suggestions from the crowd. The teen in the jock's grasp wasn't moving much, and Kurt had sped up his pace in time to see the resigned look of an animal when it's about to be struck and can do nothing but go limp and hope that whatever happens next is brief and less painful than times before.

'_Toad, vhat the_—'

Kurt didn't get to finish the thought as Duncan took a suggestion from one of the older looking teens circling like buzzards (he was wearing a Letterman jacket and probably held some authority over Duncan in football; perhaps he was another quarterback or a receiver) and changed his grip on Todd. He brought one hand to grip Todd's knees and then roughly tried to grip at Todd's throat. An adult would recognize it as the way to throw a small child into a swimming pool so they could be sent up in the air head first and then land in the pool with their feet curved so they didn't splash; a maneuver that, when done on dry land or in the halls of the school would be extremely painful on impact.

Panic set in as he sped into a run, not really aware he was speaking until the words were out of his mouth, "Matthews, don't you dare, you—!"

When Duncan's hand found Todd's throat, the Brotherhood boy's eyes widened so much that it seemed most horrible, arms finally flailing, but too late as Matthews swung his arms to the left and then rammed Todd's body forward and into the air, thumb nail digging into Todd's skin on release. Todd's mouth widened but no sound came when he moved up and forward into the air, most probably to impact his head with the ceiling and then break his legs on the floor.

"Oh, look, frogs can fly," Duncan chuckled as Kurt spun from where he was running and over towards where Todd had the highest probability of falling; a scuffed piece of floor three feet from the lockers on the left, "Not too long until pigs can, too." And then the blonde walked away before he could see the rest of his handiwork; watching Tolansky crack his head like an egg wouldn't be worth the detention he would be handed if a teacher caught him—he had a game come Friday and wasn't going to miss it.

* * *

Todd did the smart thing when he saw the ceiling headed towards him and ducked his head just enough so that the curve of his back hit the ceiling and skinned the flesh under his shirt on impact. Other than that, he couldn't remember much as it had irritated the injuries he already had and the pain was too horrible and he lost consciousness as a form of protection.

That didn't quite explain why he woke up in the mansion of the X-Men, in their medical ward, with Fuzzy sitting in a chair—wringing Todd's turtleneck between his hands—next to the cot Todd had been placed on, but he was sure it would be explained to him once his eyes swiveled over to the blue mutant and looked expectantly at fretful amber eyes. It was almost funny when Kurt gave a little squeak, finally noticing Todd being conscious when he had not been five seconds before, but Todd pushed the impulse to laugh away when his mind picked up on that, if Kurt had Todd's sweater, that meant nothing was covering him but his pants.

Todd's webbed hand came up to his throat (not the throbbing skin patched up with gauze and animal friendly medicated salve) and his free hand clenched when he found gauze around the semi-open tear that had been far too close to his vocal chords for his liking over the last month. The skin around it was numb, so he had probably given one hell of a sedative to deal with the pain that flared up whenever he even grazed the scabby injury, but Todd really didn't care.

His hand fell back onto his caught and he looked expectantly at Kurt, a semi-pissed off expression crossing his face, even though Todd knew Kurt hadn't even done anything. He was in a bad mood; he deserved to feel irrationally spiteful.

"Uh," Kurt coughed, setting Todd's shirt over the back of the chair as he stood up (holograph off and showing his regular blue self) and looked at most anywhere but at the other mutant before he spoke, a look of determination and anger on his face, "You had a pretty nasty infection. The Professor says that you getting beaten up vas probably the best thing that could have happened othervise you might have died from the fever caused by your neck injury. Vhich, by the vay, I vas vondering how you could have had, seeing as you live vith four other people who should have noticed and taken you to the hospital!"

The volume of the German's voice didn't help as it echoed everywhere in the infirmary and Todd flinched, closing his eyes and waving one hand in a motion to put in this fact to the panicked blue boy; sitting up and folding one leg under the other so he wouldn't slip off the cot and hurt himself more.

Kurt didn't pay attention and clutched Todd's shoulders, teeth looking very sharp in the bright light the room had, "Vhat, did you think that they vould think any less of you than they already do? You got injured in battle, so vhat?! Hiding the fact that you got hurt by accident isn't vorth dying from infection!"

Both of Todd's legs—still very in shape compared to the rest of his body and very likely to stay that way until his died—flung outwards and jostled Kurt in the stomach to make him let go.

Kurt let out a mouthful of air before being hurled back into the chair he'd been sitting in as Todd set himself in a crouch on the cot, battle ready and looking angry in a feeble sort of way. If he could, he would have been yelling at Kurt, asking him how the German expected anyone in the Brotherhood to give a rat's ass about him even if he did try and tell them. How did Kurt think he felt when he woke up the day after the battle to find himself unable to speak and couldn't tell anyone that because he had tried, damnit, and they just shooed him off to tend to their own injuries? Even after they had healed up, how could he tell them when Mystique had come back for a week to drill them and train them harder and the fact that he couldn't say anything made it easier for everyone because no mouthing off meant no punishment from the boss lady? Todd would have loved to ask the rhetorical questions and let out the hurt and ice cold numbness he'd been holding like marbles in his mind as Kurt fizzled and reared up at him—he even went as far as opening his mouth and contracting the damaged chords in his throat to shout…

"F—!"

But that one try at a word, a curse, and then he was down on the floor and writhing in '_Hot-hot-pain-stopstopstop-please…_'

He didn't really notice the wet, uncomfortable, salty tears had finally come until he found Kurt crouching next to him and trying to pull Todd's hands away from the gauze at his throat before he ripped the fresh stitches underneath.

And then the fuzzy elf was hugging him and shushing him and Todd was gripping Kurt's shoulders instead of his throat and sobbing without hum or resonance…how glad he was at that because it would have been so much worse with ugly hiccups that hurt so bad and whimpers that scorched more than drinking proofed and expensive vodka and his own accent drowning out soft German and the feeling of dry lips at the roots of his country dust colored hair. Todd buried his head in Kurt's chest and heard the rhythm of a heartbeat as the rest of him shook in time with party drums and sad music that existed only in the way of phantoms and things that didn't happen but were remembered perfectly.

…_If boundaries aren't set and damage is done, sometimes it can be fixed. Sometimes damage can be a good thing and in fixing there can be made a thing that is better than what stood before. With a little help_…


	5. Portraits

This chapter was written both for PIPNH (loyal reviewer for this tiny fic) and the guest reviewer of the last chapter. Also, be warned, this is an extremely high 'T', because I'm not switching this fic to an 'M' for hints just yet. If I go into straight sex and bondage or murder, then I'll switch. As far as I can tell, I'm not breaking any rules here…

* * *

_-:-  
The false division of human nature into "feminine" and "masculine" is the root of all other divisions…  
-Gloria Steinem._

* * *

**Portraits**-:-

Kurt really didn't know when exactly he started keeping an eye on Todd during the very end of the month (usually the twenty-fifth to the thirtieth, sometimes later), but he figured it must have been around the same time that he also noted Wanda snapping at everything and everyone around that time that happened not to be Toad who, himself, went completely unseen by the Brotherhood and the X-Men and the whole of Bayville High; missing his classes and nowhere near the school as far as anyone cared to tell.

Kurt usually had to track the smaller mutant down for a day before he found Todd loitering around large public forums—the mall, the theater, the bookstore and on occasion, adult video stores—until the sun went down. When Kurt started following Toad, at a long distance and usually in shadow with his inducer on or off to keep him better hidden, after the sun set it often lead to seeing things that, had Toad not been a mutant, would have seemed entirely impossible. Things that, at first, freaked Kurt out—almost disgusted him until he realized Todd was hiding from everyone for that exact reason.

Nightcrawler thought of it, almost in good humor but mostly in true worry, as a sort of werewolf syndrome, but was much more interesting even than that.

* * *

It had started when he had moved into the Brotherhood house and had been confronted with Rogue. The symptoms had started manifesting when he was about seven and had undergone trauma that he didn't even like to think about (_hands under the covers that were not his and were unwanted wherever they wandered while he whimpered and tried not to kick out and break ribs that would have given way so easily_) in hindsight, but stopped the minute he left and found he could take better care of himself on the streets or in entirely empty buildings that left him to his own devices. They picked up again when he was confronted with living with a person of the opposite sex and set his internal body workings back on the track they had been jumpstarted into doing from a young age.

The first time it happened, Todd had vomited in his bedroom waste basket at the crack of dawn while Rogue had been in the bathroom taking care of her own business with toilet paper and washrags wet and heated in the microwave for forty-five seconds that scorched on contact with the skin at first but did wonders for cramps and stains on her skin. She had gone to school with a note from Mystique that excused her from gym and he had hidden under his bed until the dragon lady herself had stormed out of the house with the assumption that he had snuck out to avoid her that morning.

When Rogue left, he didn't want to be relieved, but he was. It saved him a lot of trouble with cleaning and keeping big shirts, jackets and tighter pants in stock for five days that he suffered through with aspirin and the occasional stolen vice of liquor because he sure as hell wasn't going to try and take advantage of Rogue's chocolate and bananas when she was likely to suck him dry and find out his dirty little secret. He was free not to be wired on fear and suspicion that he would wake up one morning to a nasty surprise and some things either missing or new.

Then Tabitha showed up and, while she was funny and wild and actually also cool to hang out with, she caused him to experience that shift in his mutation again. This time, however, it wasn't at the end of the month, it was all over the place. Sometimes it didn't happen at all for over forty days, sometimes it happened two weeks in a row; and so he trained himself to open up his senses and predict when it would happen a day in advance.

("_Oh, God, will you shut up, Toad! I already have a headache, I don't need it getting any worse with your jumping on the roof!"_

_"I'm just tryin' to fix the satellite, dawg!"_

_Pietro and Lance flinched when Tabby growled under her breath and tossed a little energy sphere out of the broken window of the living room. The resounding release of noise from the Boom-Boom bomb caused Todd to shriek and lose his footing on the roof, spinning off of a loose shingle and rolling onto some of the bushes outside of the front door. Tabby seemed pleased at that and took her seat back on her recliner, foot tapping on the ground, one leg crossing over the other and the picture on the TV much better as the antenna got caught on a hole in the roof.)_

If this ability was useful in any other area of his life (surviving in the woods, fighting the X-Geeks, playing the ponies—something) he would have used it for that, but seeing as his life sucked and if he shared his problem with any one of his housemates he would either be kicked out in disgust (_not unlikely in Todd's humble opinion, seeing as he'd been kicked out of foster homes for much, much less_) or laughed at, he figured it would be safe to spend a few days in advance every month picking pockets and hording up the money where he kept his spare clothes. When the time came that Tabby swore up and down the halls of the house—often at noon and as a surprise to her when her pants were wrecked—or school, he would be long gone with his small keep and over on the other side of town with a note left on the kitchen table that he was snooping about for fresh pockets to pick or temp jobs or some other excuse written in haste because when he wrote them out the night before he was usually trying not to cry out in agonizing pain.

Tabby left and Wanda arrived and it was worse than ever. It was no longer a problem he could properly hide under his clothes because the rest of his physical form changed drastically in just a couple hours and if he was caught by anyone looking the way he did during Wanda's (and his own, kinda) cycle, he would not only be laughed at, he might have been lynched by a mob of skinheads or those followers of TV Evangelists that were big fans of Jesse Helms. As much as he loved (or thought he loved; seeing as even after he'd saved her life and tried to make things easier on her, she still treated him like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe—and that just pissed him off during her five days of the month) Wanda, he wasn't willing put himself in that position.

It was just blind luck that he found the crappiest hotel-motel in Bayville one week while Wanda was busy terrorizing the rest of the Botherhood with hexes that Todd took on a daily basis. He could pay by the hour or half a day or a full day or an entire week and still have money to spend when he went back to the boarding house to give off the impression that he had been doing what he said he'd been doing; rather than what he actually did. The place was notorious for hookers and people that valued their privacy, which made it perfect for Todd when he would pay for an hour to change into something that would fit his new form, go out and experience what it was like in a new body-one that was somehow not exactly what he wanted, but worked to his advantage when he was looking for something to take his mind off of mind numbing pain and score easy cash from older men that thought they could take advantage.

He didn't notice he was being watched until he started standing out in the open on side streets and outside of less than upstanding clubs in his altered body and vastly different clothing.

At first, he thought it was just his being paranoid; that he was wired to believe that if Pietro scanned the darkside of town the speedster would actually recognize him. Then he thought it was maybe just one of the men that looked him over and then passed over him for one of the other stray throwaway people in the area. Or one of them men who had already appreciated and paid him giving Todd another glance in appreciation before moving back into their cars or the clubs they had stumbled out of half drunk or high as kites.

("_Suck it up Tolansky, there's no way it's them when they're just trying to avoid Wanda cutting their heads off with offerings of chocolate and pissing their pants when she tells them to fuck off, yo_…")

Then, one night, when he had not had to _earn_ any money but had managed to pick pocket some sloshed investment bankers that had been in the area to avoid going home to their wives and children (he never felt guilty about robbing from those sorts) and he had walked into the foyer of the hotel-motel, Todd discovered golden eyes in the reflective glass that shielded the desk clerk of the hotel from being shot; thin webbed hands droppings the cash on the floor in surprise as he wheeled around. He found nothing and dismissed it as nerves, picking up his cash and then paying for the night before he nodded at the clerk and sauntered up to his room—the key in his hand an _actual_ key with a rounded end and the numbers to the room engraved so that his thumb tickled when it passed over them.

* * *

Kurt had gotten ice from one of the buckets that sat atop the free ice machine out in the hall of the second story of the hotel to cool the soda he had bought earlier that day when he thought to himself it was about time Todd knew that someone was keeping an eye on him and wouldn't judge him for how he was five days of the month.

He thought drinks, and the food he had also brought (_eight Gut Bomb burgers and two large fries that he hoped Todd would be willing to eat since Kurt had observed he barely ate at all when he stayed at the hotel-motel; as well as two bananas for help with pains Kurt knew Todd must have had with the way he tended to rub his abdomen in public places and tried not to rub when he was trying to score big on the streets in the ensemble he was wearing at present_), would break the ice when Todd stepped into the room and found Kurt sitting on the bed of his room, one hand holding out the food and other hand braced to the bed in case he had to leap away.

Had it been anyone else, perhaps, Todd would have screamed and pretended to be the person he usually pretended to be five days of the month. Had it been anyone else, he would have had to toss the heavy bag he carried around—full of his clothes and some of the money he'd stolen—and hit them over the head with it until they left or blacked-out from impact.

Todd's feet hurt in the heels his was wearing and he knew the form-fitting, pink tube top he'd been in for over seven hours had sweat stains that were very unattractive. He just sighed at the figure on the bed and tossed his bag into the corner of the room, closing the door with a reedy, bell-like click. The key was tossed onto the top of the crappy TV the room had and he accepted the offered bag from Kurt; pulling two out and setting the bag between them, one burger being tossed flawlessly into the lap of his rival-slash-baby stalker. (_Wasn't like he couldn't put two and two together; just the month before he'd seen the same yellow eyes in the dark on a side street that he'd seen in battle and had seen minutes before in the lobby. Better to surrender to the void_.)

Kurt seemed pleased by Todd just sitting down and ripped quickly into the Gut Bomb rather than staring at the B-cups that had taken up residence on Todd's chest (_or even the way the skin hugger pants on him curved where they shouldn't have been able to curve had it not been one of the five days Todd spent in his own lonely, painful hell_) or saying anything at all until he swallowed a mouthful of perfectly cooked meat and melted cheese. The food went down his throat easy, but he sobered when Todd fished around in the bag and found the bananas, eyes (much darker than they had been a few days ago in school; Vintage Gold instead of diluted rum yellow) blinking but not looking over at Kurt as he peeled the skin of one fruit and swallowed the thing whole before tossing the peel into the little trashcan peeking out of the bathroom and finally opening up his own Gut Bomb.

"It doesn't…" Kurt started, fiddling with the last square of his own burger before eating that as well and continuing on as if the pause had meant nothing to either of them, even with Todd finally looking up at him (_face thinner, jaw more narrow, nose realigned; almost quite pretty if Kurt didn't prefer it as it was and without any trace of the pale green charcoal at the edge of Todd's eyes or the peach lip balm Kurt had seen him put on before hanging out within spitting distance of a seedy club_) in an almost terrifyingly passive way that he never would have exhibited any other time they were around each other, "It doesn't hurt too badly vhen you change, does it?"

While Todd didn't really want to say anything (his voice, while still holding its natural accent, went to the same pitch as Rogue in his current form and it embarrassed the hell out of even himself), he had lost all dignity when he stepped into the room, so he shrugged his obscenely skinny shoulders—one of the spaghetti straps losing its grip on his skin and falling (Kurt followed its motion, but mostly out of the instinct he had to snatch at all string)—and replied, "Not in a while. It still sucks when my junk turns inside out, but what can ya do, yo? 'Least my tits don't bleed from the nipples anymore."

Kurt's nose crinkled like a big cat's at such a thought, but other than that he remained as passive and open as possible when he had the assumption (and reading material he'd been going over for weeks and weeks in his free time between school and the institute and missions and his friends that he loves but are so nosy it was almost impossible to do things in secret when they needed to stay secret) to reach the conclusion that the situation was delicate and everything was going to be judged and remembered by Todd forever from this point.

"Okay, ow," the German boy hissed in picturing such a thing, especially the part about the junk; what trauma, "And you've never told anyone about it? Not even Lance or Fred?"

"Eh," Todd scratched the back of his (much smoother and cleaner) neck and chuckled darkly, reply derisive, "If I tell them, then I have to tell both of the Maximoffs and somehow I doubt they'll let it go without laughin' their asses off and somehow lettin' the news spread to the Acolytes, who will then inform Magneto. Do you really think that the boss man will just let me be? Do you think that he won't try an' use this to suit his own purposes? And what'll happen when the other X-Geeks find out? It's not like I got plenty of crap to deal with without addin' this to the pile."

From the cracked window that had been left open by the previous tenant, for reasons fully to do with letting in cold night air after a couple of hours with a rented girl and a video recorder, a pair of flies buzzed over to perch on the bag full of food and swerve in the air over Todd's head. His eyes glanced at it, but his tongue didn't move to snatch it. Instead, Todd opened his mouth again and Kurt noted, abysmally, that his tongue wasn't its own natural green that Kurt had gotten so used to that it was completely unnatural for him to see it the same color as strawberries on the inside of the smaller mutant's mouth; just sitting in his mouth like a clam before he spoke and Kurt was snapped out of the dreariness forming in his head, "I know I could probably swear Lance to secrecy, but I… I really don't want to yet. I don't wanna push this on him when he has his own problems ta deal with."

"But you can't keep coming here to hide," Kurt sighed, running a tri-fingered hand through his hair and brushing his bangs out of his face before they slid back to where they had been; something he was used to, "I've seen vhat you do with those men and let me tell you something; that's a lot more dangerous than most of the battles between us."

"What, between you an' me, Fuzzy?"

"You know vhat I mean!" Tail swishing behind him, spade unknowingly flicking away the fly that had set itself on the food bag, Kurt hopped from the bed and landed so he was close enough that if he leaned in Todd wouldn't need a long tongue to hit him in the face; Todd didn't move much but his legs, changing them from Indian style to his more natural (yes, Kurt saw what Todd usually did as natural since they'd first met and pretty much enjoyed fighting him in every battle they'd been in) frog crouch, almost seeming bored if not for the little shaking Kurt could see along his knees, "You're putting your health at risk in a body you're not used to just for money and to see if you can! If it vas happing to me, I'd at least make the man wear a condom!"

"If I made em' do that, they'd lose interest in me," Todd stated, brushing a stray hair out of his line of vision, wrist sharper than it usually was without the black bands covering them, "If you hadn't noticed, even wit' my droppin' my 'Y' chromosome, I ain't exactly reelin' in the big fish. Course, then again, you've probably been watchin' me for a while, maybe you could tell me how to better myself."

Kurt was not used to the Toad putting himself down and would have been quite stupefied if he hadn't told himself earlier—repeatedly and fiercely—that Todd would likely be a little different from the new hormones flaring up like they did with natural women (he had to think of what to do when Kitty or Rogue or one of the other institute girls were during THAT time of the month or he'd never get anything done) and corrected his posture to say he was upset but was not going to attack the smaller boy. Even if he was quite sure that last remark was an insult to his character.

"One of these days you're going to get hurt because one of the drug attacks hanging around the same alley are going to think you're an easy target and kill you for the money you got for your trouble with some drunk middle-aged man. I don't vant that and I'm pretty sure you don't vant that, so can't we… vork something out here?"

"Like what, dawg? I'm not talkin' to Lance or anyone until I'm sure that they won't fly off the handle when they realize I disappear when Wanda's on the rag for an actual, real reason," Todd smirked, hopping (he could still do that, luckily, and hang on walls, but only when he concentrated on that fact that he weighed a lot less than he usually did and everything went off balance) over Kurt's head to land on the rented bed. He pried his heeled shoes off of his feet—oh and those were a sight without hair and newly clipped nails and settled neatly into black pantyhose Kurt couldn't see until the shoes were off—and then flopped back onto the pillows; hair splayed out and much shinier than it ever was usually, tiny bust settling so that if Kurt stayed on the ground he looked almost like he usually did (if much smaller and paler), "And why do you care anyway, yo?"

Kurt rose from his spot and found that he really didn't like that tone, all bitter to the self in belief that he wasn't worth being worried over—a rag tossed aside when it outlived the point where the coloring of the dye was bright and some of the stitches still held together—and didn't think anyone ever would anyway so he didn't know how to react when he got attention of the kind Kurt was giving him.

Stepping over the discarded wrapper Todd had left from his Gut Bomb (a corner of the bun was left behind with far too many sesame seeds than he supposed Todd liked) on the floor, Nightcrawler sat on the corner of the bed, tail wrapping around his waist and spade at the end brushing Todd's foot on the tip of his big toe, soft and comfortable and earning him a glance from Todd, "I know I shouldn't since ve're… supposed to be enemies, but," he licked his lips and caught Todd looking at the color of his tongue rather like Kurt had with him earlier, seeming sad, and quickly tucked it back behind his sharp white teeth to spare him the unwanted emotion, "You're really not that bad. None of the Brotherhood are, from what Rogue and Kitty say all the time. Not all of the X-Men think the same way as Scott. And let's not forget that I was present at Arrowrose when you played hero for Wanda."

At the last word, Kurt sort of sing-songed but he missed out on the desired effect he'd intended when Todd picked up the pillow he'd been on and stuffed it over his head to yell into it for a moment. It was high pitched and not all that different from when he screamed on the battlefield, but it did make Kurt's hair stand on end; hands coming down on the other's knees when it seemed that he was going to kick up and down on the mattress and draw attention from any number of the room above, below and around the one Todd had rented and they were both in for perhaps the long haul.

"Vhat? Vhat did I say?!"

Todd went lax at Kurt's panic and with that, his knees flattened on the bed, leading Kurt to buckle forward from his precarious position ass over tea-kettle and almost on top of Todd if he hadn't turned at the last second and landed to the side of the bed that Todd wasn't on. It was a double bed, the same as most every room, but it made it awkward still when Todd removed the pillow and turned over to see Kurt trying not to fall over the side.

"I don't want to talk about Wanda right now. If she wasn't around, I wouldn't be on this side of town with the worst cramps in the whole world and boobs that I can't even fit into a freakin' bra!"

That would have been funny to Kurt if Todd's face wasn't so red and his hand wasn't so close to his hip, "I'm…sorry?"

Todd sagged in place, tiny and worn out from the night and Kurt just being there, which was so very different from all the other times he'd been in the exact same room. His hands balled into fists and he brought them up to his chest, just over his new breasts and trying to cover them at the same time his legs crossed so tight that Kurt knew he would be in pain if he was still packing. He looked in pain as it was anyway and Kurt's burning yellow eyes paid mind when Todd looked at him and he saw—unlike all of the others in the Xavier institute and probably even the Brotherhood as a whole most days—the scared teenager underneath. Not unlike himself when Kurt was very little and knew for a solid fact (despite his parents' best efforts to deny it) that he was unlike anyone else and would never feel normal, no matter how much his parents loved him and tried to protect him from angry, superstitious villagers that would have liked nothing more than to see the Blue Demon crucified or burned at the stake.

"It's not fair…" Todd whimpered, turning from facing Kurt to fold into himself facing the window of the room, knees touching his breasts. He'd been on the verge of breaking for a long time coming, but with his eyes watering in the corners, he wanted to save whatever pride he had left by biting his lower lip to try and covers up the beginnings of wracking sobs. He'd cried as a girl before, when Rogue had been with the Brotherhood, but he was much louder and unattractive since then and didn't actually want Fuzzy to see him.

To himself, Kurt agreed with that, but to Todd he allowed for a human reaction. He brought his arms around the other and hugged him from behind, arms and hands settling around Todd's waist, nowhere near high north or south on the boy's figure. He'd grown used to wrapping his arms around him in battle before tossing him somewhere, but this was much softer and he would never think of doing that when he tightened his hold and Todd didn't protest.

The window allowed a small spring breeze into the room, sucking out the smell of the Gut Bombs as well as the two flies that had made themselves a small meal on the leftover bun in Todd's wrapper and were full enough to go and lay eggs somewhere.

* * *

…_And again, adjustments are made with time. At least, with help, it didn't take Todd years and another added trauma_.

Todd sat in his seat among the others of the Brotherhood, eyes worn out and yellow rather than gold, almost reflective of his boyfriend (_such a nice word; even if it took Todd over two months to actually say it_) that stood in the doorway (giving every single one of the others a warning look made all the more dark and sinister by the fur on his arms raised and tail erect) awaiting their reactions.

It took a solid moment that would imprint itself on both Todd and Kurt for years to come, but finally, and oddly, it was Wanda who spoke up first.

"…So that's why you're always gone when I'm…"

"…Yeah," Todd replied, even if it was a rhetorical question.

Kurt looked more pleased than he should have when Pietro bolted up the stairs at that confirmation in a blur of motion, followed by the bathroom door slamming open and shut. When Lance and Fred got up and went separate directions with equally dazed looks on their faces, Kurt felt a little bad, but let it pass when Todd received a little pat (not a smack, not hex) on the top of his head from Wanda and she walked up the stairs to most likely talk Pietro down from the ledge; offer him other thoughts than the medical images the speedster had running through his mind at the moment about the medical operation that could turn a penis inside out and turn it into a vaginal cavity—maybe something about heavy metal or race cars. Anything, Kurt assumed, would be better than thinking about their smallest housemate going through something like that without a sedative or anesthesia.

Kurt looked back over to Todd to find him perked up (he had a mental image of the Dancing Frog in the cartoons but removed that to prevent a snort) and smiling over at the blue boy.

"You were right. I should let you explain things for me more often, yo."


	6. The Pre-Wave

I am convinced that the last few chapters have been very dark. Unfortunately I can't do much about that, so this will have to do. Also, this chapter is dedicated to both PIPNH for critically acclaimed reviews, as well dedicated to my special Guest (you know who you are) whom I sincerely hope gets an account so I can monitor for the review without getting mixed up.

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_-:-  
I want to see a whole blaze of lights, all the streetlamps going on at once, all the houses burning—like something's about to happen.  
-Melanie Rae Thon._

* * *

**The Pre-Wave**-:-

Kurt is fairly certain that the list of people in the Institute that actually don't mind his being with Todd can be counted off on one hand (four fingers and a thumb; not like Kurt's). Everyone tolerates him because the Professor _told_them to, but, once more, few actually think it's a good thing that Kurt sleeps with (loves, kisses, cherishes) the Toad.

Kitty kept her mouth shut on the matter because it would make her a hypocrite to criticize Kurt's choice in love (her and Lance had finally started going steady—without starting and stopping—after the problem with Apocalypse, holding hands in plain view of Scott rather often), but often enough when the Brotherhood boy and the Fuzzy Elf sat in the rec. room watching movies, Kurt spotted her eyeing the sandy haired boy. Eyeing them both; but mostly Todd.

Scott thought he was out of his mind, shook Kurt's shoulders the day he brought his boyfriend back to his room so they could study for an exam in school, asked him repeatedly, "Have you lost your mind?! Is he blackmailing you, or something?! How can you think this could work?!" With such a high voice it lead to a ringing in Kurt's ears over an hour later when he'd had the presence of mind to teleport away and then later go back to Scott and hissed profanities at him in German until Scott got the point and walked away (had he a tail, it would have been lowered to the ground and snug around his ankle), never to talk about it again with Kurt. When he tried to threaten Todd into laying off of the blue elf, he'd been graced with being ignored entirely by Toad and harassed by the rest of the Brotherhood for weeks.

Rogue had been a little weary the first week after Kurt had told her his likes in the boy, "I'm not going to defend my choice in a boyfriend, I just thought you, as my sister, should know about it." But after seeing Todd help Kurt get some dead leaves out of his hair after a training session, she'd smiled and later in the evening, during dinner, told her brother a little memory she had about the smaller mutant when she was with the Brotherhood and there was only she, Todd and Lance in the house. Kurt grinned at how she described walking in on him—at three in the morning—dancing to a little radio in the kitchen; the music a steady symphony of violins and Mozart. She had asked Todd if he played and he had shown her the webbing between his fingers, "Used to, can't anymore."

[_One_…]

Jean was polite about the whole thing—she remembered him when she had first come to Bayville, his little frame avoiding the football players and barreling past her once like a rabbit from a pack of wolves when the jocks got out of practice and he was anywhere near the track field—and didn't really bother with the thought of the two together. She kept Scott off Kurt's back and did her best not to let her face crush around the edges like a rotting apple when she walked by the two and smelled Todd in the worst month of summer, and for that Kurt was happy, but she did seem to give off the impression that she thought—oh, telepaths, if they weren't thinking, they would probably blow up from foot to head and leave nothing but red mist behind—that Kurt could do better. She kept brining up Amanda when Kurt was away from Todd and it irked him because that ship had sailed and gone down like the Titanic.

Evan didn't know about the relationship in itself, but Kurt felt it prudent not to tell him as, the one time Todd had decided to volunteer to help Kurt bring supplies at the Professor's request to the Morlocks, Todd had been tremendously unlucky and bumped into Evan while setting down a box of instant ramen and other dry good foods. The blue mutant had _just_been lucky to keep Evan from skewering Todd when he'd run around the corner near the sewer entrance and blatantly lied that the Brotherhood was on friendlier terms with them and Xavier wanted to give them a trial run at "being a more integral part of assisting in mutants less fortunate;" Todd being the one to get the job of delivery man with Kurt. Todd had caught on quite well, considering his spine being flat to the ground and a large, glowing spike was barely an inch from the bridge of his nose.

("Please remind me never to go back there, dawg," Todd huffed, slinking out of the manhole and covering it back up without another thought as Kurt sighed and got the first aid kit out of the back of the X-van; preparing to disinfect and bandage the rather unattractive set of cuts along Todd's left cheekbone—a result of being cuffed once before Even had gotten him to submit to the ground like a worm, "I ain't lookin' to get my legs fried in butter by Porcupine.")

The New Recruits have a varied visual and emotional reaction each time Todd hops the wall or the gate to the Institute and then easily walks the rest of the way to Kurt's room or Kurt bounds out of the mansion to find Todd sitting in one of the trees waiting for him. It's less judgmental than all of the older students, but there's still a little freaked out part of them that he can see keeping an eye on the two as they make dates and go out or stay in.

Kurt had caught Bobby Drake and Roberto stop arguing point blank when Todd once walked right into the kitchen from the patio door and snapped up a bumblebee that had managed to get in from a cracked window that had no doubt been the result of Rahne being tortured by the humidity—fuck the consequences of bugs; she was shredding her bedcovers in the attempt not to just up and start barking at how much sweat was pouring down her and she would have her cool evening air—preventing the fuzzy thing from freaking his boyfriend out. He'd crunched on the still buzzing thing just once and the fire and ice mutants had cleared out so _fast_. They had entirely forgotten why they were fighting in order to make little gagging noises and then mention certain episodes of Fear Factor in the early seasons.

Jamie was, perhaps, a little in love with Todd when Kurt had once left him alone in the yard to go answer a call from his parents and Todd had run into him by accident on the way to see Kurt for a date they had scheduled. Jamie had split into seven clones and knocked the older mutant into the pool five feet away, exposing Todd to the (thankfully) chlorine free waters with a resounding splash. Todd had not freaked out but had actually laughed when he came out—three minutes later and not at all out of breath—and complimented Jamie on the use of offensive tactics. "I see how it is. First sign of trouble and the enemy gets tossed into the water before they can strike. Very clever."

[_Two_…]

Amara didn't like him. Flat out did not like the Toad, not matter how much Tabby vouched for the kid being a lot less high maintenance than say, Pietro or Lance, and promised that once she got used to Todd in their personal space, the smell really was more like… "Okay, it's still not that great, but after it rains, he takes on the smell of wet leaves and mulch instead of garbage."

"Not helpin', yo!"

Well, Tabby liked him easily, even if she did still throw little bombs his way when she was bored.

[_Three_…]

Now, that said, what really made Kurt consider his friends and allies in his torrid affair ("Why's our affair torrid, Fuzzy?" Todd smirked, the word not escaping his notice when Kurt bemoaned his existence after getting away from Scott to go over to the Brotherhood house and just chill with Todd in the bed in his room that lacked covers during the summer and had the odd scent of daisies and jasmine—which Todd later revealed to be stuffed into a hole in his mattress after pilfering the plants from the local botanical gardens. Kurt sighed in Todd's chest and played his tail across the Todd made visible by wearing sandals around the house, "I don't know. Sound's more manly.") was that out of all the people that he knew best since coming to Xavier's, it was Logan and Ray that seemed to actually go out of their way to make Todd feel less like an enemy and more like Kurt's boyfriend.

"Kid deserves as much a chance as anyone else, I s'pose," Logan chuffed when Kurt dangled from a tree and asked the much older man about the situation while he set up for an outdoor training session, battle mask not in place yet and giving Kurt visuals of his wrinkled nose and how his eyes kept trailing over to where the side entrance to the manor had been before the explosion that Mystique caused. Kurt didn't know it, but not far from there was where Logan had come face to face with Toad just after he'd been introduced first hand to the Danger Room, a freshly revealed Kurt and Storm with her lightning bolts. Logan wouldn't acknowledge it, not at all, but he supposed, really, that since Todd had been the very first of the Brotherhood, it had been _their_fault for not giving him a better…first impression.

[_Four_…]

"He gave me a light when I needed one for a cigarette the first time I skipped French class," had been Ray's easy answer to Kurt's question, shrugging it off as one of those things that didn't need further explaining before he walked off to dinner and left Kurt to just stand out on the front steps of the Institute and await Todd's "borrowing" Lance's jeep to take the Fuzzy Elf on a little trip to the edge of town. Out where the light pollution of deep oranges and yellows of dying bulbs slithered away to let the pure white stars in the sky shine brightest while they kissed or ate the meat filled sandwiches Kurt had made, clutched in a brown bag at his hip; whichever they felt like doing first since they always did both while alone out in the country.

[_Five_…]

Not much of a fan-club for the coupling of a blue demon and a toad, but it was a start.

And hey, if they could get _Wolverine_ on their side, there was a very good chance that it would be worth the trouble of dealing with everyone else in Mutant Manor.


	7. The Tides

Well… I was right; this is where the rating goes up. Written again in dedication and spirit towards both **PIPNH** and **Guest** **:/** who so inspire and contribute to the writing process.

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_-:-  
Who cares if you disagree?  
-King of Anything._

* * *

**The Tides**-:-

It astounded Todd, more than anything else, that there was only a handful of people from his side of the tracks that sternly, 100% disapproved of his relations with the ratty plush toy that was his boyfriend. If that, even, because all of them changed their minds so often.

Wanda could not have been in a situation to care less or be more grateful about the whole thing ever since she'd started going out with Allerdyce (a fine thing for him to find out after going out to get groceries with the others and being the first to walk in on them having sex—in broad daylight, imagine—with a paper bag full of eggs, boneless chicken and that kind of French bread that crackled when touched with just one finger. He just kind of stood there watching them for about ten seconds before he realized that the others were just out the door carrying the heavier objects; at which point he'd set the food on the kitchen table, removing the blanket the two lovers had thrown off the back of the couch in their frenzy and draped it over them while Wanda made a noise that stopped and started like the whistle of a teapot and Todd hopped up the stairs before Pietro walked through the door with the pack of second rate soda they'd been able to afford) and Todd had politely not said anything about it. She felt a little guilty that he had to find out about her and Pyro in the worst way possible, so really, she had the best reaction towards Kurt each time he came over to the Brotherhood and sometimes stayed the night (offering him eggs if he walked down the stairs in the morning and she was in the kitchen).

Lance had not been surprised to find out he was gay. ("Dude, you probably only went after Wanda because she'd be the guy in the relationship and you'd be the chick. Don't worry about it.") He'd been surprised that the person Todd ended up with was Fuzzy, but mostly only because Kurt didn't strike him as gay. True, that probably had everything to do with Kitty informing him on all kinds of things—accidentally, but still mentioned—that presented Kurt as strictly heterosexual (Tabby and Amanda being very large signs of this, as well as his habit of tuning his holowatch to make him look like the Terminator), but still, even though Lance had the theory that everyone was at least a little bisexual, the first time he found Todd and Kurt making out behind the bleachers at school he had just kind of stood there gawking like a fish out of water for a few seconds (no offense to Todd, but, damn if that tongue didn't make the picture very pretty), before spinning on his heel and walking away with the mumblings to himself along the lines of, "Okay, so he's totally over Wanda… at least it wasn't someone like Summers or Drake…"

The Boss Lady (Queen of the Damned herself with twice the inclination to snuff out the life of an easy target) Mystique had not taken it well when she'd first found them making out on the roof of the Brotherhood Boarding house, Kurt's tail batting against the satellite antenna and ruining the picture of the screen inside. She'd gone up to fix the antenna so she could see some kind of news casting for some word about what might have been a mutant battle having nothing to do with anyone in Bayville and when she'd laid glowing golden eyes on the two of them, she'd made a low growling noise in the back of her throat and attacked Todd with that same monstrous figure she'd used to recruit Toad with in the first place.

(Kurt had reared up from his position after Mystique had knocked Todd off of the roof with one clawed strike in a fashion that Kurt could tell, from the tiny cry Todd had made when faced with the impact, had definitely drawn blood and would need stitches after Kurt got down from the roof and fished him out of the rose bushes on the northside of the house that no longer supplied roses but plenty of thorns, "Vhat the hell do you think you're doing, Mystique?!")

The fight between the two blue mutants had not been something that Todd would have liked to happen (at any point; he would have preferred the lady not knowing at all), but the end result was the best he could hope for under the circumstances. Mystique had left the roof after Kurt had told her off a little in both English and a little in German and he hadn't seen her since for anything other things to do with the house. And if he should see any sort of animal stalking him when he walked too close to the woods to get to Xavier's, he hopped through the trees or ran like a marathon champion.

[_One_…]

Fred had, by far, been the most helpful person after he'd done the laundry picked up from Todd's floor and found boxers that didn't belong one too many times. He'd been good enough to put all the boxers (that couldn't fit Toad even if he grew another foot tall, another foot wide and gained a hundred more pounds) in a paper bag and delivered the package to Kurt in person after gym with a hardy pat on the back ("Mein Gott, your friend might be nicer than he seems, but if he pats me again, he just might break my spine.") and a functioning smile, all the while promising that if the relationship ended badly and he found Todd crying afterward that he wasn't above waiting until Kurt was asleep at the Institute to crush his skull like a grape. Hah.

Todd probably would have preferred to live in the river, or under a bridge, or in the woods, than to have ever let Magneto find out about Todd's knocking boots (more than that, but it made him feel like the guy in the relationship the more he used derisive innuendo to refer to him and Kurt being together; which clearly he wasn't, seeing as Kurt was way more masculine than he let on) with one of Xavier's X-Men. The second he'd found out, he'd considered it an opportunity to espionage and the like. He'd encouraged Todd to date Kurt, but that hadn't sat will with Toad so after about the fiftieth time Mag's had questioned him about the layout of the mansion, or any weak points that they could get at, Todd had opened his mouth and told the metal manipulator to lay off of him. It didn't take a genius to realize that the after affects of that conversation had been the reason Kurt had freaked out after Todd had been seven hours late to a date they'd had that night, bamfed to Toad's room at the boarding house and found the other mutant in a state that required Kurt to bamf him to the mansion infirmary and keep him there for about a month. It was somewhat a shining moment for Todd when that had been the straw that broke the Brotherhood's tolerance level of Magneto and Kurt had received word via Kitty from Lance that the old guy probably wouldn't bother him again, considering the extended fight between Magneto and his children directly after they'd found Todd's room empty and fresh blood on the carpet.

[_**Two**_…]

Pietro didn't seem, at first to care one way or another about who Todd slept with; he just seemed to enjoy that Todd even managed to get someone at all. As weeks went on and neither Fuzzy nor the Wart Boy broke it off, however, the speedster seemed to develop a kind of bi-polar attitude towards them.

When Kurt or Todd stayed over at the mansion for more than one night, Pietro had lewd comments awaiting for Todd when he got home, along with plenty of hints as to what he felt about the relationship as a whole ("I put down ten bucks that it won't last another week.") or towards both Todd and Kurt as singular entities. It wasn't pleasant sometimes, but he never hit either of them or tried anything worse than mild teasing when they stayed overnight at the boarding house.

When Summers bothered Todd about advising him in breaking up with Kurt, it had been Pietro that had overheard the conversation and immediately got up in the brunette's face about minding his own business ("Oh, so what, nobody's good enough for Nightcrawler except the girl who he dumped? Like Todd could do worse than she could with her stalker habits and her little army of plush toys that not even you could defend, you self-righteous ass.")

[_Two and a Half_…]

All things considered, Todd counted himself lucky that he lived with far less people than Kurt and all of them understood the odds he was against. It made both him and Kurt grateful when they snuck out and neither went to boarding house or mansion, but just sort of went in and out of the stress and the misunderstandings like Flotsam and Jetsam on the sea of life.


	8. The Ear and the Eye

I love my reviewers. I love them, I do. I don't care how crazy that makes me sound, because they are all so wonderful and helpful and because of them I've gotten this out much faster than originally intended. Well, that and just reading '**Perfect** **Life'** by Feygan (go and read that. Yes, I am proactive in bringing to light other people's work). Hinted crossovers this time (and not in the way most would think, because I hate OC's and will do what I have to not to make any), but who cares; it's future AU.

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_-:-  
To be kind, to be proud, to be fearless.  
-Vladimir Nabokov._

* * *

**The Ear and the Eye**-:-

_(Years and years had passed since high school in Bayville (the fun and the triumphs, as well as the bigotry and having to deal with Magneto and his superiority belief system that had inevitably made his children leave him for pastures they perceived to be, if not greener, at least more spacious and better for themselves and their friends) and New York state. Ten years since graduation and two years since a law had finally been passed stating that mutants were not required to register unless they committed a Class A felony (which could only be acquired if some mutant killed someone or something; an understandable reason to be registered)._

_Kurt Wagner remembered the huge party that had taken place at Xavier's when the president (a woman of about thirty-something by the name of Pepper Potts that had started addressing all of the most important issues in the country, rather than side-step them or get caught up in the propaganda) announced this and still smiled at how most of the people who had been the first of the students came back and celebrated for almost three days. Jean had cried for an hour, Scott holding her the entire time; Ororo had kissed Logan full on the lips as if he had just come home from a hundred year war; Ray, Amara, Jubilee, Tabby and Pyro had gone up to the roof and set fire to the sky in thick bursts that Roberto and Sam made a game of flying through; Remy got done on his knee and proposed to Rogue sixteen times before she broke down and said yes, with Kurt finding him afterward with a smile and a warning that every man had to give to a man that married his sister; Hank and Xavier played chess until midnight while quoting anecdotes from great men like Lincoln and King; Evan and the Morlocks had assisted in a barbeque in the back yard and stayed in the mansion when Xavier extended his offer again._

_Now the blue German was thirty-two and was being welcomed to his first day as a teacher in New York State College. Most colleges around the nation had become involved with making the students of the generation and generations to come less fearful of mutants and had started seeking out any teachers that were both mutant and good at their work. They felt educators should not fear, but embrace this new leap in history and evolution and had been quite proactive in trying to hire Hank McCoy and Kurt himself since the zero tolerance discrimination law had been passed. Hank had decided to stay in Bayville and resume his teaching at Bayville High as the new principal, but Kurt (while he loved his family and the children of the Institute) had felt it was about time to face the world on his own. He'd said yes after talking with all of the important people in his life and getting confirmation that they would miss him, but if he felt it was right then they supported him more than anything.)_

The grounds were long and wide and beautiful enough to be featured in a local paper every year when the announcements of graduations came around. A school comprised of three or four buildings that stood at two to five stories, and each with a basement. Not Gothic and not depressing, but made and comprised of Brown and Red Brick with French or cathedral windows to let in light (especially in the library that stood among the center of the other buildings like the nest to a cluster of trees; not an eye sore and not left unattended as students made their ways in and out when Kurt walked up the steps from the teachers' parking lot) in an all-encompassing way. Trees stood everywhere along the grounds, especially near the area that the horticulture students used for their own studies and projects; flowers clustered within the confines of a miniature maze that would have done well in garden of Mary Lennox. A few leaves scattered underfoot of students and teachers alike with the coming of the fall season and the start of a new academic year.

Every building had a few paintings from the art department that had been seen in galleries in New York during fairs for Cosmopolitan or Glamour or some museums, but a lot of them had the same artist that Kurt didn't notice in his hurry.

He wished his parents were still alive to see him become a teacher, but he pushed those thoughts away as he stepped into his new classroom for the first time and stood at attention of the principal who was waiting for him in one of the back seats (the desks and chairs for the students placed in a way that was like being in a concert with stairways leading to the bottom where Kurt would speak up at them and they would listen; though he wasn't sure if that was to make him or them more comfortable) of his new classroom. The door shut behind Kurt when his tail circled the handle and pulled it with a click.

Though he had spoken to her quite lot on the phone, he imagined the woman who called herself (standing at just below his eye level and wearing new black sneakers with brown laces of all things) Brenda McGuff as a bit older than just higher than middle-aged and without the smile she presented when she looked up from stitching what appeared to be something featuring two Welsh Corgis into book covers.

"Ah, Mister Wagner, a pleasure to see you as one of the few teachers that aren't late on the first meeting…"

* * *

Perhaps it should, to Kurt, been perceived as something in the right direction when he'd been shown around the campus and been told that there were two other mutant teachers, but after being shown around the grounds and introduced to one of the other mutants (lovely Irish or Scotsman—Kurt couldn't tell over the accent—by the name of Sean with red, red hair and freckles who taught political science and had a voice that popped eardrums according to one of the other teachers who Nightcrawler thought introduced herself as Bernadette who taught in the math wing) and only having been looked at in fear once, he felt…. A bit like he knew people everywhere felt just before a tornado hit. He knew that it was silly, but it was as if there was some giant shoe waiting to drop and crush his good mood and good fortune the second he finished his greetings to everyone and then made his way back to his own classroom to organize his desk and go over what was half the syllabus before he finalized it.

Somehow, though he found it the first time okay, he got lost and found himself heading down a staircase he hadn't noticed on his way in and that nobody had told him about in the teachers' lounge.

Even though it was a flight of stairs that led down to the basement level of the south building—his department was in the same building in itself, but with windows and without the smells that Kurt remembered from his own days of school as residue of nicotine trapped in the paint of those spaces under the stairs that stoners or high strung students hid behind so they could smoke in peace before going back to a class they may well have been failing—he continued his steps and his direction because he thought there was a radio playing. If there was a radio on, then maybe he could get directions back to where he was supposed to be (wasn't as if he had a choice in anything else, seeing as he couldn't remember the way and therefore couldn't teleport).

_{…Is the devil you scream  
God what life you leave behind  
Still forcing yourself to bear your cross…}_

The classroom with the door half-cracked open gave off the musty smell of paint in all bases and forms (wet paint came off strongest but that same chemical balance of chalk shavings and gold leavings for fancy mixtures made Kurt's brain jump to an image his mind held of the first time his mother had painted the kitchen in their home in Germany and he had walked into it for the first time with newly dried Leprechaun Green ceiling and Sea Foam walls), but it was indeed the room that had music echoing out of it and a shadow playing through the shower glass window in the door; the shadow was pitch because of whatever light was glowing off the walls within. He took a small breath—prepared, always, for the first time someone saw him—and touched the door to move it into the room; no need to even touch the door handle as he stepped in and came to the sight of the back of someone while they hummed to the music playing and worked at an easel (there was a picture beginning to form there; bright pink Kurt had only ever seen when Kitty was out of fresh clothing in gym class at the manor, as well as a kind of gray that reminded Kurt of Storm's hair when soaking wet).

"Uh, hello?"

The teacher—he must have been, seeing as he was as tall as Kurt and didn't present to be a teenager or young adult in that clothing of ruddy jeans, a simple black smock, an extra large whole apron that Kurt had seen chefs wear that was covered in old paint, and monkey slippers tossed to the other side of the room that allowed Kurt to see long toes and bright green skin—turned his head to look over at Kurt and the fuzzy man sucked in more breath as the sight of yellow eyes he hadn't seen in years and years. They were set lazily on him and that creepy little smile Kurt remembered from the last time the Brotherhood (SHIELD agents, Kurt had to keep reminding himself; good guys the last time he checked a few years ago) had assisted and Toad was still with them, appeared to be not dead at all.

"Greetings, my fellow teacher. What can I do you for?"

And then the tornado hit somewhere in Kurt's brain and his stomach at about the same moment he got a look at just how long his ex-boyfriend's hair had gotten since the last time they'd seen each other. It made him look a little like one of the drug dealers Kurt had noticed when he'd dropped into a little Quickstop for coffee and a doughnut before meeting Principal Brenda (the coffee had been extremely black and extremely hot and Kurt had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing at the conversation the two clerks behind the checkout were having about Star Wars). Todd also had his hair in that weird half-bun that had been on the ever expanding cons list (a list that had inevitably led to Kurt's dumping the smaller man) Kurt carried around in his wallet to remind him of exactly why they couldn't have ever been anything more than friends before Todd stopped showing up in Kurt's life—and Bayville general—at all.

He couldn't get mad, though. From what the other teachers had said, Todd Tolansky had been a teacher there first.


	9. Just a Stranger

Mm, this is taking another turn into AU, but that just makes me happy, so please don't mind. Mutants do exist in this universe, but they're tolerated and sometimes even admired; I just wanted to make that clear this time around. Also, watching Joan of Arcadia really helped here.

* * *

-:-  
_You know what they say. Information is not power. Wait...  
-House, M.D._

* * *

**Just a Stranger**-:-

So the gods decided Todd would have to be the pathetic mortal of this particular county to act as the catalyst for change. Not like he had anything better to do living with the other foster kids at Miss Darkholme's, but a little more warning than some weird people following him around and giving him assignments with the simple (way too simple and he's still wholly surprised he believed it after one of them showed up across from where he was sitting on the bus and told him to do something nice for soccer star Jean Grey—an assignment that lead to her finally dumping Duncan Matthews and the Principal finding that the guy was in on a drug ring) explanation that they were there to stay, was a little unsettling. At first, anyway.

Eventually, after dealing with Pyro (the God of Fire, even though he'd explained in that difficult Australian accent that 'Gods' weren't really the right things to call him and his kind; it only stood to be called that because calling them their actual titles was impossible—their language was just _bad_ for annunciating anything in English) and Piotr (a former Titan, as it were, but way too nice) in taking an assignment to post flyers around school for a concert, he discovered that it wasn't so much unsettling as it was annoying. Other people could see them, but didn't really _notice_them, so when he cursed them out in public, people just ended up staring at him like he was insane as well as hygienically challenged. At which point he shuffled off to quietly do what was asked of him or, having already done that, go to the library or the boarding house, or anywhere else where the other worldly beings didn't usually pop in on him, unless they were the size of a mouse that like Amara girl-spirit-creature-person.

He had been lucky that week so far. No Iceman had shown up after gym class ("_Hello, I need you to do a favor for me_…"); Rahne in that scary wolf form hadn't shifted to two legs from four when he'd picked up the newspaper from the boarding house porch ("_Your science teacher, Mr. McCoy, is goin' through some things and will need someone to talk him off the ledge soon, so this boy named Evan Daniels really needs to learn this bit o' Shakespeare_…"); and he had successfully managed to clean his room like Miss Darkholme had asked without the sun shining after the rain the town had that week so that he came face-to-face with Sunspot ("_Arbor Day is coming up and the school track field could do to have some new trees near the far end by the bleachers_…").

He should have known that walking home and happily looking at the 'A+' he had gotten on his essay on Norse mythology would lead him to bumping into a new God; this one much stranger and cheerful than all the others had been.

The tall, blue, fuzzy and apparently _German_God looked down at the paper in Todd's hands and had grinned at the little jump the dusty brunette gave at yellow, glowing eyes, "Lord Summers vas incorrect about your abilities. He owes myself and our Icey acquaintance expensive drinks the next time ve go out on a humorous mortal holiday."

Todd wasn't really listening but just hanging his head and groaning about fate and destiny and how if those were living entities too, then they should just die in an explosion. The Fuzzy Dude chuckled at that and poked Todd atop his head to get his attention back.

"And what are you? Some kind of ratty plush toy?"

The smile on the other's face diminished a little at that, but didn't disappear completely when he answered, "I believe you'd humans vould consider me a pooka or a sprite of some sort. My kind call me Nightcrawler, but you my green-ish freund may call me Kurt Wagner. Or just Kurt; I am not so picky as Cyclops."

Todd rolled his eyes and stuffed his papers back into his raggedy backpack (one of the straps had fallen off long ago and the other fit snugly to his shoulder while constantly clasped in one hand) and continuing his walk; so what if a couple people actually did notice this sprite—and his spaded tail—as he followed after the teen?

"Okay, Kurt," it always seemed like he was pushing his luck when he called one of the immortals by a given, _normal_name, but he digressed, "What does the universe want of me this time? And will the universe reward me this time, because I really think that getting something for my services would make this whole thing actually worth the trouble. Do you have for me a sex buddy, or a house in the Bahamas? Or how about a few quarters so I can take the bus to Atlantic City this weekend?"

"Some other time, perhaps," Kurt snorted, sprinting a little ahead to walk in front of Todd, only backwards so they were looking eye to eye (Todd could only imagine how that was possible with those feet, but if a cat could do it, why not this guy), "For this moment, I need you to take all of that money you got from your job and go to New Orleans."

(The job that he was referring to was something that had caused all of his house mates to either laugh at or just stare at Todd like he was joking; until they went to the gas station near their house themselves and found him clerking by loading the small shelves with various kinds of junk food while yelling at a customer that "Yes, we have those kinds of cigarettes," and "No, the restroom is for employees only." All compliments of that tall-ass, red sunglasses wearing Cyclops, who told him to get a job and understand adulthood a little. He hated the job and every idiot customer that walked in the doors, but had stopped complaining when he had helped Miss Darkholme with the grocery bill that week and she had started to actually treat him like a real human being, rather than the mutant who accidentally slimed her car when he was running from some of the football team.)

Todd stopped walking and would have certainly crashed right into Kurt if the sprite hadn't done some kind of teleportation and wound up behind Todd. Though, it did lead to Todd choking on some black smoke and waving his hand around to clear the air.

Kurt's three fingered hand patted Todd on the back as he caught his breath and looked back at the pointy eared being, completely astounded that anyone would ask him to do something like travel cross-country in a matter of hours, "What the fuck, yo? Tonight?"

"Actually, within the next three hours."

A clock that hung above a coffee shop around the corner the two were standing on (lovely golden time piece that had been there for about twenty years and still worked perfectly), struck 4:00 PM and exactly three chirping sparrows, that had been pecking a donut left in the gutter, flew away in a panic of strong muscled wings and left behind only one feather.

* * *

...The plane ride had been horrible. The food provided to Todd in coach—or Hell, as it was known to human and mutant kind—had been something that perhaps wouldn't be classified by science for another thirty years, the stewardesses had glared at him each time they passed (his scent got worse when he got nervous; and by nervous, he meant travelling over fifty-thousand feet in the air and only protected by a huge steel carrier that could blow up if a flock of geese passed too close to one of the engines) and he had used five air-sickness bags.

Go to New Orleans, find a guy named Remy who would be at a tea shop that catered to poker players by midnight (as though Todd didn't have anything else to worry about; he had been awake for over twenty-four hours) and then convince him that it would be in his best interest to go to the Xavier Institute.

Todd hadn't expected to see Nightcrawler ('_Kurt'_a little voice supplied in the back of Todd's brain; that same part of his brain that sounded off whenever Todd checked out the rear ends of men rather than women) waiting for him at the gate with a massive wardrobe change (from simple cargo pants and T-shirt mesh, to something that Todd had only seen on doormen outside of swanky apartment buildings back in New York city) and a sign with Todd's whole name on it. Todd stood still a little too long and almost got bowled over by a pair of drunk yuppies leaving First Class and, after swearing when one of them stepped on his foot, hopped over to the blue pooka; at least it was a somewhat familiar and friendly face in a sea of completely normal people.

"Well, you're certainly more hand's on than the other all-knowing bastards that ring me up," Todd mused, shutting up when Kurt handed him a bag from Mickey D's, complete with large fries, twelve pack of nuggets and three hamburgers that were still crisp and hot; at which point he straightened up and spoke clearly with more respect, "How may I be of service?"

Kurt gave Todd a smile—genuine and kind and something Todd never thought he'd get—and handed the teen the food, steering him out of the airport from prying eyes and caring not when some teenagers that had also left the plane said something foul about mutants and gays.

"It seems that vhile ve expected Mr. Remy to be available at the Tea Shop, ve underestimated certain probabilities of vhat vould lead him there," the Fuzzy Dude spoke, not slowing his pace and bounding after Todd when the mutant hopped the five flights of stairs down from the plane terminal leading out to the streets of New Orleans, everything bustling with brass bands and bright lights, parades going on upon the parameters of every traffic lane and women and men partaking in gaining or tossing strings of beads, "So, I thought it vould be in your best interest, as vell as ours, if I accompanied you to meeting him."

"…What exactly does that mean, yo?" Todd asked after swallowing one of the burgers whole.

"Vhat I said," Kurt shrugged, tail rearing up to wind around his own waist when a drunk party-goer tried to yank on it and nearly succeeded, "I vill be vith you vhen you go to the tea shop to meet Remy."

Todd looked up at a sign on the corner, lit fireworks going into the sky and sparklers fizzling around as children crossed the street before another float in the parade made to move onwards (this float a configuration of dragons and mermaids in hideous the colors of the Titanic perched at the bottom of the ocean); the mutant teen checking to see if he was going in the right direction, considering he had never been in swamp country before, ever. Kurt stopped next to him and hummed to some weird French coming out of a speaker phone implanted high above the streets, pointy ears twitching and making Todd want to touch them even as he finished off the burning hot French fries in the bag and started in on the nuggets.

The two crossed the street when the float made down the lane, and Todd questioned even though he knew that any answer he got would be vague or unanswered entirely, "So why exactly is this Remy guy so important, yo?"

"All people are important; it's just that this particular young man is going through a new life transition from vhat he knows."

Todd knew it; the gods didn't really answer questions. They made statements that made sense in hindsight but not in present tense.

Dull yellow eyes, different from the ones that projected light into the already bright environment, blinked as one three fingered hand took the trash that had become the residue of Todd's meal and tossed it into a nearby dumpster bin. _Swish_. That hand came back to press on Todd's shoulder as he spotted the tea shop that had been described to him before he'd gotten his money together and then boarded the plane, rubbing a loose half-circle on the thin shoulder-blade barely covered by a shirt that had been thinning over the year every single day.

It was comforting as they both made their way into the tea shop that was alive with all sorts of activity and Kurt kept behind Todd so he knew he'd have back-up even when Kurt let go as Todd's eyes landed on a Cajun in the corner scamming on some California kids that were keeping their eyes on his cards rather than the hand that stayed below table level.

"And onward we go," Todd muttered to himself—and perhaps Kurt as the blue immortal disappeared in his black smoke again and another small cloud of that same smoke drifted down from the ceiling where it could be guessed that he was perching in case things didn't go as was hoped for Todd.

* * *

...The ride back—on a train, which took twice as long as a plane and required the ability to deal with the sounds of _clippity-clop, clippity-clop_every five seconds—was less nauseating, but only because Todd didn't eat and couldn't eat because of the beating he'd taken from that ratbag father of Remy that had tried to take the young red-eyed mutant back to a Thieves Guild and had not succeeded only because Todd had been there to kick down his muscle men (bless his lower body strength that performed at five-hundred pounds of pressure a kick) and slime their way out. Remy was pleasant enough, but Todd couldn't bring himself to really participate in conversation, what with the concussion he'd sustained…

Kurt had popped back next to Todd when Remy swaggered into the Xavier Institute after being seen in by Rogue (Todd had dreamed once that he'd had a crush on her in Freshman year, but had shrugged it off after she had accidentally walked through the boys' locker room when she'd tried to avoid Jean Grey and seen him naked and bleeding in the shower after Duncan Matthews caught him alone on the football field) and Todd had been given a fresh bandage for the laceration he hadn't paid much attention to on his forehead and collarbone. The teeth that Todd could have bet were better than can-openers flashed with a full-blown smile and Todd fidgeted when Kurt actually _squealed_something in German and hugged him.

"This vent so much better than any of us vould have guessed! True, our expectations have never been very high for mortals, but that's no excuse for a perfectly executed deed."

Todd sighed and continued to limp his way back to the boarding house, trying very hard to figure out what he was going to say to Miss Darkholme when he walked in after almost two days (technically not two full days until the sun peeked over the horizon, but his point remained valid) gone and no notice to anyone.

"…I am so going to place myself permanently on your vavelength. You're vay too much of a catch to share."

Kurt's shoulder under his arm was a blessing that Todd didn't question and felt even more grateful for when they disappeared from the sidewalk leading from the Institute and found themselves like a bolt of lightning inside Todd's room at the boarding house. He didn't say anything—almost two days and no sleep was finally catching up and biting him on the ass—when Kurt removed his shirt and placed him in his bed, covers folding and tucking around him to keep in warmth and keep out vague whispers of chill. He fell asleep almost the second his head touched the pillow, but not quite fast enough for him not to notice Kurt whispering something German in his ear and placing a feather light touch to the bandage on his forehead that felt a lot like a pair of lips.

When he woke up over thirteen hours later, he would notice the cut under his bandage would be completely healed. When he went back to school on Monday, he would not feel any pain where he had been beaten by a bunch of Cajun thugs. On Tuesday, Kurt would be back again and suggest to him something that would make him want to pull out his own hair, but would be pacified by Kurt showing up to help a little…


	10. Stranger with Truth

This is a continuation of the last chapter on account of not a whole lot of people getting the joke. This will be a bit more specific and therefore out of my general comfort zone, but it's better than nothing.

* * *

_-:-  
Repeating myself is part of the job.  
-Exchange Student God; Joan of Arcadia._

* * *

**Stranger with Truth**-:-

"So you guys popped up back into the public eye because mutants being outed makes things a lot _easier_?"

Sharp teeth that Todd had been glaring at for the better part of an hour (time and longer filled with climbing the outside of a church and cleaning bird defecation off of pretty stone angels with chipped wings—some missing fingers and bits of their carved hair—or gargoyles that had chicken wire spun round them to keep birds from nesting between large talons or within open maws; something the church leaders were glad for but Todd had to pretend to care about because of Mister Cyclops suggesting it while Todd was trying and **failing** to get lunch) grinned and shined bright in the twilight evening at Todd's rhetorical question. Kurt was proud that he'd finally figured it out after weeks of asking without any hints. It meant he cared enough to have a learning curve.

"We don't pop," Kurt corrected, sitting idly between an effigy of the Virgin Mary and an angel, not helping Todd at all as the boy almost lost his footing and some of the water in the bucket hanging off of his hip dribbled grey water to the sidewalk below them both, "We exist between two actualities. That is, what you can see and what you think you can see."

"Whatever," Todd groaned, setting the water bucket on the side of a gargoyle that looked a bit like the result of what would happen if a Golden Retriever was allowed to reproduce with a goat; the bucket's metal handle fitting perfectly in the curve of the statue's long tongue (_impressive in stone, but not so much as Todd's own twelve foot appendage_). He wiped the sweat that had been gleaning off of his pale skin for the last hour and looked upon the landscape of the sun completely out of sight of the horizon; chirping crickets were acting up in the fields that surrounded the particular church the two of them sat upon and Todd very much wanted to go and catch some of them for the lunch and dinner he hadn't been allowed because of this request from the gods.

He ignored his urges for the moment, choosing instead to remove the slightly frayed washcloth from inside the bucket and finish the last statue before he hopped off and was glad to be rid of the sight of heavenly hosts around him. It was bad enough when the gods actually spoke to him; he didn't need to be surrounded by their unspeaking, solidified principal martyrs and saints and so on. The place was giving him the creeps and as soon as he wiped the leavings of white droppings from the face of Saint Ulrich, he was gone and he really didn't see himself caring if Kurt (that name didn't seem to feel real when he thought of it and compared the simplicity of what he knew to be the immortal figure sitting near him to its plainness; the blue furred being should have had a grander title—not including the suggestion of Nightcrawler; he wasn't a worm) followed after him or left him alone until the next stunt asked of Todd.

His thumb hooked hard and lithe to the cheek of the saint (dopey ass looking fool, a fish held in his hand and staring down, down, down, but without the righteous ire of all the other saints—especially the fat necked Saint Barbara whose feet Todd cleaned of rooftop mud leavings and more and more bird droppings that took over twenty minutes with the way her stone shoes had been decorated with false designs of barley and oak) and Todd allowed himself a vain smirk when the white muck came off straight away. He dropped the washcloth into the water—suds bounding and sloshing in a counter timed circle on impact—and looked back over to Kurt, "Can I go now, dawg?"

Kurt disappeared from his place by the Virgin and, much to Todd's deep humiliation as bile rose up and then flushed back down into his stomach with the scent of smoke and demonic flame, reappeared to grab Todd and the bucket of suds to bring them all back down to the front doors of the church. The smile stood firm on his face (yellow eyes kind and understanding more than any human could comprehend in their own short lives) as he replied, despite Todd groaning internally and trying not to throw up the remains of his breakfast (a cinnamon and wheat bagel with cream cheese and a spatter of grape and apple jelly, as well as the last of the coffee Miss Darkholme had made for herself and wasn't entirely certain she ever finished after her first four cup with two sugar cubes each and a little mint creamer—really disgusting when Todd swallowed the grounds, but great for waking him up in the morning) on Kurt's chest, "Just return the bucket into the priest's linen closet. You'll be finished and I will be good enough—"

"Compared to all you other ghouls and all knowing beings," Todd interrupted, taking the bucket from Kurt's three fingers and dumping the water out and onto the cement surrounding the entire imposing church; the water washing away the shells of grasshoppers that had died days ago and been left by any bird that thought their carcasses less than worth the effort to fly down and swallow them. Some of the soap bubbles caught in the grass of the lawn and reflected the blackening sky.

Kurt coughed into his palm and his tail traced a crack in the wall of the church (it, in the mind, felt like the braided veins of trees and an old woman's palm) as he continued, abashed but not defeated, "To reward your hard work with dinner."

"At the Ritz, yo?"

A snort was not a sound most demigods allowed themselves to exhibit, but Kurt pulled it off in the most flattering way possible, "Ah, nein."

* * *

His affection for the mortal was frowned upon by Cyclops and the others, but Kurt found that, looking at Todd as he ordered—with Kurt's nod yes and gleaming white teeth that were not threatening to this young man—a Blue Plate Special and an extra-large, triple chocolate milkshake that it didn't matter. Kurt hadn't felt such warm affections for another being that wasn't long lived in such a long time (short of the small bunnies he saw birthed by new mother rabbits in the wild and moths that many others couldn't appreciate for just being; never mind the way the insects chewed on old clothing that gathered dust and were only treasured while in use) that he could put up with the way that the other demigods whispered behind his back when he went off to give one mission after another to the boy.

He shook the thoughts out of his blue furred head, for the moment, as the food arrived and Kurt nibbled on his own small order of curled onion fries and Todd dipped a long pointer finger into his milkshake, perplexed.

"I didn't even know this place existed, yo," Todd mumbled through the large bite of chicken covered in gravy he had taken, finger still dipped in the cold of the chocolate treat and eyes wandering the décor of the tiny roadside diner Kurt had bamfed them to that was still warm from the heat of the day and was staffed by people that hadn't sneered at their obvious mutations since they sat down at the back where they could hear the orders being placed by the waitress to the cooks behind the back counter, "Did you make it?"

The blue demigod grinned through his fries and swallowed, "Not me. A friend influenced a young woman by the name of Paige Guthrie to open this for the good of tired truckers that caused a lot of wrecks from exhaustion before this place was set up to give them a perk up and a hot, cheap meal."

"Anyone I met?"

It was unappealing to see the way Todd twitched each time the waitress came too close to their table, but yellow eyes held firm to the motion of Todd drawing his finger finally out of his milkshake and his long, dark tongue licking up the sweet stuff before his finger went back into the cold and repeated the motion. Distracting as that was, Kurt managed to answer the young man with a minimal amount of disruption in his voice.

"…Uh, I don't think so. Nein, you've never met Pixie."

The finger got sucked entirely into Todd's mouth as he laughed at the name of yet another demigod and Kurt almost lost the power of his capacity to control his body temperature and the blood rushing to all the places it hadn't rushed in a very long time (he wasn't like that; he was a gentleman and for the last hundred or so years he'd been entirely happy not to acknowledge any sort of fleshy entertainment).

Maybe affections such as this were frowned on for a reason…

Todd removed his finger from being circled by his tongue and Kurt chewed on the last of his onion fries and outside, seen through the window that framed the two of them to the outside world and the moon that was starting to rise, a pair of motorcyclists drove past the diner and the sound of their engines sent Todd into a little jump that Kurt grinned at, tail expertly catching the spoon Todd almost dropped to the floor from the result of his surprise.

Maybe situations like these—Kurt handed the spoon back to Todd, who blushed and didn't speak a word when Kurt dipped his own finger in the ice cream to draw it back and taste—should be embraced. Screw everyone else, as most people say.


End file.
